Technological Advancement
by Spiritus Rex
Summary: Hiro and Tadashi Hamada have been on the run for a long time, never staying too long in one place, never leaving any traces of themselves. Things always got dangerous for them if they stayed somewhere for too long. Until suddenly, something big happens, and then their time on the run is brought to an abrupt end. (Technopath!Hiro)
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Aaaaaalright, so this is certainly a change up from my usual brand of fanfiction, which thus far on this account has been nothin but Merlin. But I saw Big Hero 6 and absolutely, fully, immediately, fell in love with it. The story was wonderful, the action well paced, the characters compelling, all of this despite the flaws that it had (that everything has. there are flaws in everrrrything.) I have fallen _so hard._ And I decided, what better way to show my appreciation for such a great film than write a fanfic and examine the universe further in ways that Disney never will be able to do. My speciality tends to lie in AU's as well, so I thought, well, why not give it a shot?**

**So, here's the first taste of my first Big Hero 6 fanfiction! The next chapter probably won't come for awhile after this, since I do have two currently ongoing Merlin fics to be working on, as well as the sad thing called reality that demands my attention sometimes. I hope you all enjoy this idea I've got cooking though! I'd love to hear your thoughts in the reviews! Thanks!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>The bot fight was loud, a cacophony of sounds of screeching metal on metal. Tadashi did his best not to flinch at each devastating crunch he heard, knowing he'd be noticed immediately amongst the bot fighting crowd for his odd reaction. Walking through that alley was like walking through a minefield for the older Hamada, and he bobbed and weaved through the people accordingly, searching for the messy head of hair that was more familiar to him than his own face.<p>

His brother, Hiro, was addicted to bot fighting. No matter how many times Tadashi lectured Hiro on the _multiple _dangers of the illegal sport, Tadashi somehow always found his little brother back at the edge of a ring, controller gripped tightly in his hands, and a large smug smile on his young face. The smile would stay until Hiro would win, and then, the thugs prowling around the edge of the ring would descend.

Tadashi failed to hold back a wince at a sudden loud shriek of metal, gaining a few odd looks from the people closest to him. The shriek tapered off as the robot making it died, and the scattered cheers and conversation of crowd faded with it. Something about the fight had shocked them; the rowdy rebels of society who fought with robots in back alleys, and Tadashi began to hope over and over that it wasn't what - or rather, who - he thought it was.

"Hey, nice try! I will admit will admit though, you gave a better fight than a lot of other people."

All that hoping, for nothing. At the familiar voice of his younger brother breaking through the sudden silence, Tadashi started, and began to force his way straight through the crowd instead of sliding around the patrons like he had been earlier. It was rather rude of him to go plowing through like he was, as many of the people decided to let Tadashi know, shouting "Hey!" and "Watch it!" or elbowing at him sharply as he pushed them from his way.

Because there, standing just outside the ring and collecting his winnings from the pot, was Hiro Hamada. He was holding his robot controller in his hand, just like he always was, and was smiling smugly, just like he always was. The tiny robot Hiro had won with that night was doing a small dance in the center of the ring around the mutilated body of the much larger, far more impressive-looking bot that it had defeated, it's dance an automatic code that Tadashi himself had helped Hiro to work into the bot so that at a push of a button it would begin to hop around cheerily. Though now, it was definitely more of a mocking dance than a joyous one, and the face of the large, older man that Hiro had beaten rather thoroughly was steadily growing red as he watched the small bot's actions.

"Wanna fight again maybe? I mean, if you've still got money of course." Hiro goaded, shoving the last wad of cash into one of the zipper pockets on the side of his pants. Hiro's opponent huffed like a mad bull, and heaved his bulk up off of the ground in a very threatening and frightening manner.

Now, Tadashi realized as he finally pushed the last few people away and stood at the edge of the crowd, would be a good time for him to intervene.

"Woah woah hey-!" Tadashi yelled as he reacted, breaching the unofficial barrier around the bot-fighting ring and stumbling to a full stop a few feet in front of his brother, now standing firmly between the smaller fourteen year old and the larger man.

"Tadashi!" Hiro said in surprise from behind him, but Tadashi didn't respond, far too busy trying to make sure he and his brother didn't get pummeled into the brick walls of the alley any time soon.

"Hey, calm down there." He held his hands out placatingly, recoiling slightly as the thug's face went even redder. "Aha..." Getting pummeled into the bricks was looking more and more likely, and as the man snapped his fingers, prompting a few grimy henchmen to detach themselves from the crowd and start closing in on the Hamada brothers, it was looking more like it was time to run rather than time to stay and talk it out.

"Let's go Hiro!" Tadashi shouted, spinning and grabbing Hiro by his thin wrist, pulling him forward and nearly jerking the smaller Hamada off his feet as they plunged back into the crowd. The bot fight loser roared in rage as they fled, but Tadashi didn't look back, concentrating solely on getting his younger brother and himself out of that suddenly very small seeming alley. Hiro's bot stopped dancing the moment Hiro's controller crossed out of range, falling limply to the ground beside the bot it had destroyed, just as lifeless.

"Wh- Tadashi no! I just built that bot!" Hiro shouted, trying to twist in his brother's grip and get back within range of his robot so he could command it to leap to its feet and follow behind them.

"Forget it, Hiro!" Tadashi snapped, voice tight, as he jerked hard upon Hiro's wrist to keep the boy from trying to turn them around. It was a harsh action, but necessary, as they were still being chased by a large group of henchmen who were likely gang members. The crowd of viewers had all but fled at that point, all heading the same direction Tadashi was pulling Hiro, sweeping the two brother's up in the panicked river of motion. The police would surely be there soon, brought in by the noise and violence. Tadashi had to have himself and Hiro out of there before the police arrived.

"Get back here with my money you cheating little piece of scum!" The man Hiro had beaten roared from a distance, still standing by the bot-fighting ring. It was the last thing the brother's heard before Tadashi shoved Hiro in front of him at another thin alley way that branched off from the main one they had been in. The bricks were slick, wet, and far too close together, and Hiro winced as his brother continued to push on the center of his back to get him to squeeze his way down the small space.

"Ugh, Tadashi, I feel like toothpaste." Hiro groaned, his free hand braced against the bricks, his other hand still holding his controller.

Tadashi didn't respond, listening intently to the now pretty far-off sounds of the frenzied crowd and the gang-members clawing at the small alley that Hiro and Tadashi had squeezed into, far too large or far too uncoordinated with the rest of their group members to follow the brothers.

"I think we lost them. Ha, that was too easy." Hiro whispered with a snicker after a few more moments of being squeezed down the alley, "Tadashi, do you think we-"

"Quiet, Hiro."

Hiro's satisfied grin fell off his face, and he pulled his free hand from where it still ran along the wall so that he could grab his now useless controller with both small hands. Tadashi was angry, as he normally was after catching Hiro at a bot fight, and so Hiro decided to go along with his older brother's command for the moment until his older brother's anger faded. The anger normally faded fairly quickly, the older Hamada never having been one for holding onto rage or upset emotions, but there was something in the stiff pressure of Tadashi's hand pushing against his back that had Hiro actually nervous for the lecture that he would surely get.

They broke out the other side of the thin alley with great twin gasps of air, as if they were resurfacing from underwater rather than merely running in a thin space between buildings not meant for people to squeeze through. Hiro shoved his controller back into his side pocket as soon as possible, and then turned to look at Tadashi, who was still staring down the thin alley they had just come from.

"Are you ok?" Tadashi asked without looking at Hiro.

"Uh- yeah I'm-"

"Are you hurt?"

"No, no I've got no injur-"

Then Tadashi was spinning towards Hiro, face alight with anger born from concern. He reached out and latched onto his younger brother's thin shoulders before Hiro could leap away, hands stiff and holding on like vices.

"Then what the _hell _were you _thinking _you knucklehead?" Tadashi snapped, staring eye to eye with Hiro, Hiro's brown eyes wide like those of a deer caught in front of a car. Tadashi jerks him once. "Bot fighting is _illegal_, Hiro."

Hiro stared at Tadashi, stunned at his older brother's reaction, before responding, "Bot fighting's not illegal, betting on it is though. But I thought we could use the money soooo..."

Tadashi growled in a way Hiro has never seen him do before, gritting his teeth and his hands tightening ever further on Hiro's shoulders. "You could have been hurt, or caught by the police. Then I wouldn't have been able to do anything for you Hiro, do you understand?"

Hiro began to nod, but was cut off by another jerk from Tadashi, "Yes! Yes I understand." He said, reaching up to grasp at Tadashi's wrists and try and pull his brother's hands away.

Tadashi wasn't having any of that though, and his hands did not budge, "No, I don't think you do understand, because this is the fifth time you've been bot fighting." Hiro ducked his head and turned his eyes down from Tadashi's, and Tadashi shook him one more time to get Hiro's eyes back to his, "Do you not get it that every moment you spend in the spotlight is another moment I could _lose you?"_

Hiro's eyes were wide again, and Tadashi unexpectedly slumped forwards toward his little brother, his grip on Hiro's shoulders softening. "Please Hiro, just... don't run off again. Don't bot fight anymore." He smiles weakly at Hiro and finally let's go, "we'll find other ways of getting money than bot fighting, okay?"

Hiro said nothing, but his face was set in a rather childish, frustrated pout, and Tadashi's expression twisted as if he had just eaten something very sour, "Look, I'm sorry for yelling at you. Let's just... Let's just go to where I stashed our stuff and get moving again, ok? We can talk more about this bot fighting problem of yours later."

"...Fine." Hiro answered eventually, shoving his hands in his pockets, resisting the urge to rub at his sore shoulders.

Tadashi smiled faintly, and after a beat he ruffled Hiro's dirty hair, "I'm glad you're okay, little brother."

Hiro gave a small smile of his own, but quickly went back to frowning and batted Tadashi's hand away, "Yeah let's just get our stuff and go, this city was boring me anyways." He sauntered on ahead down the street, leaving Tadashi to smirk in his wake and then half-jog a bit to catch up.

He had a feeling that when they talked later though, that Hiro would be hard pressed to give up his bot fighting. As much as the younger Hamada liked to say that Tadashi didn't understand, Tadashi _did. _They'd been on the run for awhile now, going from city to city, street to street, cheap apartment to cheap apartment, and Hiro wanted not only to help with the money, but also prove himself at something he was good at and didn't need Tadashi for. The problem came with the fact that all types of people could slip into bot fights and see Hiro, especially the ones Tadashi didn't want Hiro to be seen by. Not to mention what would happen if the police got ahold of his baby brother.

No, Tadashi would never let that happen. Though he had told Hiro that at that point there would be nothing he could do, Tadashi knew he'd never give up on Hiro. He'd blow up the police station if he had to, just to keep his brother out of the hands of those who might want to do him harm.

"So hey, where'd you stash our stuff exactly?" Hiro asked from a few steps ahead of Tadashi.

Tadashi smiled at his little brother, before nodding in a different direction than the one they'd been heading, "This way."

In the distance, police sirens wailed while they walked hurriedly, with a subtle note of franticness, away.

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><p><strong>Please review!<strong>


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Alright, so I know I said this chapter probably wouldn't be out for awhile, but the wonderful, massive, amazing response to this story just completely floored me- I literally couldn't speak when I saw the follower and favorite count after just these past two days. 31 favorites?! _61 followers?!_! I don't think a story of mine has ever gotten such a quick or explosive response. oh oh - and r****eviews will be responded to via PM too! but yes oh gosh- thank you all so much. This fandom already I can tell is going to be one of my favorites, and I certainly have no qualms about working on this story while my Merlin stories are hitting some blocks. Hope I don't disappoint you all and I hope you continue to enjoy my story!**

**So now, on to chapter 2, in which a bit more of the situation is revealed.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>"Well, here we are!" Tadashi announced, opening wide the door into a small, rather run-down looking apartment, that had at most three rooms. "Home sweet home."<p>

"Yeah, for the next week." Hiro quipped as he entered the apartment, walking around Tadashi who still held the door open. Tadashi rolled his eyes and shut the door as Hiro tossed his backpack into the air, letting the thing full of heavy robot pieces and other odds and ends hit the floor and slide into the center of the room.

"Hey, be careful with your stuff." Tadashi admonished, walking over toward the window at the back of the main room of the apartment that doubled as a kitchen, with a small oven and fridge shoved to the side. "And at least we get this nice view for the next week then." Tadashi joked, gesturing out the grimy window. He reached up and wiped some of the grime away a moment later, and then blinked. "Wait, Hiro, come look at this."

Hiro paused in picking up his backpack, left it in the middle of the floor, and squished himself next to his brother in order to see out the grime-free spot that Tadashi had cleared. Just outside was a marvellous view of one of the less busy areas of San Fransokyo, with people walking calmly beneath the colorful signs and pink trees that were spread out along the sidewalks. While the building they were staying in was a bit more run down, the neighborhood it looked out upon was in transition, with many of the buildings looking far nicer and newer than their older companions, the mix of the two types of architecture added an interesting atmosphere to the urban area.

With a smirk, Hiro turned back around and headed for his backpack again, "You're welcome." He commented, scooping up the bag and looking around for an open piece of furniture where he could let his possessions rest.

Tadashi raised an eyebrow, "'You're welcome?' And what exactly am I thanking you for?"

Hiro had opened one of the two doors that led to another room and was peering inside, and Tadashi could see through the doorway Hiro's gap-toothed, cheeky smile reflected in a bathroom mirror, "Well, it was mainly my money that was used for this first payment, right?"

Tadashi rolled his eyes and headed for the other room, and opened the door up to see two good-sized beds in an otherwise empty space. The beds had blankets and pillows on them, much like hotel rooms had their beds done up for guests, which Tadashi was thankful for. "Yeah, your _illegal _bot fighting money, you little crook."

The older Hamada could hear Hiro snort from behind him, "Illegal shmegal. It was money that _I got _and it got us here so _you're welcome." _

In retaliation, Tadashi spun around and, upon noticing that Hiro's bag had been set down somewhere safe finally, lunged forward at his younger brother. Hiro only managed to widen his eyes and yelp before Tadashi had the child nearly smothered in his arms.

"Ugh-! Tadashi get offa me!" Hiro whined, pushing his arms against his older brother's chest as Tadashi wrestled him to the ground.

"Nope." Tadashi said as Hiro's hand pressed against his chin rather roughly, "You're under arrest now."

"Don't even joke about that!" Hiro snapped back, still struggling to get away from Tadashi as the older Hamada squished him. Eventually though, Hiro's grumpy expression began to melt away, as he smiled almost against his will at his brother's antics. Tadashi grinned back as he continued to rough house with Hiro. It had been so long since he had seen a genuine smile from his little brother. "C'mon Tadashi get _off!_"

And with his mission accomplished, Tadashi complied, "Fine fine." He said, backing off with his hands held up. "I guess you can go free just this once."

Hiro picked himself up from the hard floor of the apartment and brushed himself off, his blue jacket skewed on his thin shoulders. Tadashi reached out and straightened the jacket for him as Hiro huffed, "Yeah, thanks." But the small smile was still there on the younger Hamada's face.

Tadashi gave Hiro a nod, put his hands on his hips, and then glanced around once more at the apartment that would house them for however long it was safe. "This is a nice place though." He commented, and Hiro hummed in agreement beside him before moving with a grin over toward the small kitchenette. The brothers were used to being at least a little bit hungry always, so having the supplies to make food right within their grasp was wonderfully convenient.

But as Tadashi continued to observe, he was suddenly curious as to where Hiro's bag had gone. His own bag was still sitting near the door where he had dropped it subtly after opening the door, but Hiro's bag which he had previously been tossing around carelessly was abruptly absent. "Where'd you put your stuff?" He asked, a tone of suspicion creeping into his voice.

Hiro's back stiffened almost imperceptibly, and he bent to fiddle with the knobs of the small electric stove. "I just put it somewhere I guess. Why?"

Tadashi frowned, the satisfaction and amusement from earlier fading. "Hiro…"

Hiro spun around suddenly and pointed his finger into Tadashi's face, "You're not taking my bots or my tech!" He declared as Tadashi's leaned away, eyes going wide at the vehement tone of Hiro's voice. "You can ban me from bot fights but you can't ban me from my stuff!"

"Wh- I wasn't going to!" Tadashi said, pushing Hiro's pointed finger away. "And I'm not banning you from bot fights as a punishment - it's so you're _safe." _

Hiro glared at his brother, "I'm still not telling you where my stuff is."

Tadashi opened his mouth to respond, but instead he paused, and then shrugged, "Ah well, I'll find it myself." He said, turning around to go back toward the bathroom, where Hiro and his backpack had last been seen together.

Before he could reach the bathroom though, a heavy weight slammed into his back, "Now _you're _under arrest!" Hiro yelled a lot less teasingly than Tadashi had, knocking his brother to the ground and scrambling over him to try and get to the bathroom first. Tadashi reached out quickly, snagging Hiro's thin ankle and bringing him crashing to the ground - with a loud "_Oof!" -_ as well.

Hiro managed to get to his feet before Tadashi though, and made it to the bathroom without being dragged down again, "Hiro!" Tadashi yelled, scrambling to his feet as he watched his brother reach into the cabinet under the bathroom sink and pull out his backpack that was stuffed full with clothes and technology.

Hiro spun to Tadashi, and held the bag like a weapon, grinning madly now. "Hah- Beatcha." The younger Hamada said as Tadashi didn't approach further.

"It wasn't a competition." Tadashi said with a roll of his eyes. "Now hand it over."

Hiro shook the bag, and his eyes flared, "Nope."

Tadashi held his hand out, gesturing for Hiro to give him the bag, "I'm not letting you make more bots to fight with."

Hiro shrugged, "Taking my stuff won't stop me. I'll just take apart the microwave or something."

The microwave across the room let out a gentle mechanical ding in response, and Tadashi frowned at Hiro as the younger boy's grin widened. "Don't." Tadashi warned, already knowing what Hiro was doing. He had seen the boy touch the stove and the microwave, he had seen it, and had thought nothing of it, even though he _knew _his brother. The only way Hiro could do what he did was if he touched a piece of technology, and after that there was no stopping him from-

Another, annoying ding came from the microwave, and slowly the tray inside the piece of technology began to spin, the vent whirring as the microwave began to heat up, seemingly as if a ghost had turned it on.

Tadashi didn't look at the ghostly microwave. "Don't." He repeated, and Hiro's grin weakened only a bit before it flared back to full as the electric stove situated beneath the microwave turned on too, beeping loudly and beginning to heat up rapidly. The combination of both the stove and microwave was too much for Tadashi, "Hiro, stop it!"

Immediately, the microwave and stove whirred to full power, Hiro blatantly defying Tadashi, and with a frightening pop and flash of bright light, the bulb within the microwave burst.

As the pieces of equipment wound down and turned off, Hiro looked sheepish, but was still grinning. He enjoyed displaying his unique technopathic abilities - despite what Tadashi always said to him about reigning them in and keeping them hidden - even when they tended to end in disaster as he overworked the technology he would control. Tadashi had flinched and hunched himself in as the microwave bulb had popped, worried that the glass of the front of the device would have blown out and hit him. He straightened his back slowly, staring his younger brother in the eye as he did so.

"Well, now I've gotta buy something to fix the microwave when I go out for food and supplies." Tadashi grumbled, as he extended his hand once more, "So I'll cut you a deal, little brother. Give me the bot fighting money you hid so you could save it up," Hiro chuckled nervously, "and I'll let you keep your stuff and build what you want with it."

The technopath grinned at the prospect of being left to build whatever he wanted, as even in the past Tadashi had overseen the building of his battle bots. "You've got yourself a deal." He said, immediately bringing his bag close to him and unzipping the top pocket with just one hand, the other holding the bag still. Tadashi rolled his eyes and finally relaxed, though he still threw annoyed glances the microwave and stove's way. He'd have to build in a failsafe or something on them to prevent Hiro from overloading their electrical energy again, as he had back in their first and only true home. Anything that ran on electricity Hiro had the ability to manipulate or control, but only to the limits that the technology was already able to reach. Anymore that than limit, and the result usually turned out like the microwave, busted and burnt.

Hiro shoved a wad of cash into Tadashi's hands, and then immediately made his way over to the table set up to the side of the room, just to the right of the window that the brothers had been admiring the view out of earlier, obviously closing the conversation. "Have fun shopping!" The fourteen year old called out as he let his backpack rest on the tabletop, already focused on digging through his few clothes and unearthing the wires and leftover bits of robotics that he had stored from the last bot he had built.

Tadashi watched him, stunned for a moment at how easily his younger brother was able to switch his focus so completely from one task to another, "Unbelievable." He muttered, shoving the cash into his pocket and making his way to the front door of the apartment.

"Huh?" Hiro muttered from his place where he had already settled down at the table.

"I'll be back soon, bonehead, just don't leave or set fire to the place while I'm gone, alright?" Tadashi warned with his hand on the doorknob.

At a noncommittal grunt from Hiro, who was already fully immersed in his work and technology, Tadashi allowed himself a small, fond grin. Then, fingering the apartment key in his one pocket and the money from Hiro's bot fighting in the other, he went out into San Fransokyo to find the nearest supermarket.

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><p><strong>Please review!<strong>


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: aaaand here's chapter 3. That wasn't too long of a wait huh, was it? (not like my other fics - cri e s im sorry i will pick those up again soon) but yeah! chapter 3! this is kinda exciting. Keep in mind though while you read this that this is my first venture into bh6 fanfiction, and so I apologize for any OOCness or odd plot pacing that may occur. **

**Once again though, the response was ridicuLOUS AND MADE ME SO VERY HAPPY. I love you all who have favorited, followed, and reviewed thus far. it's really wonderful and I'm so so so glad you're enjoying my story.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Tadashi, despite having graduated highschool with flying colors just before he and Hiro had gone on the run, realized as he was standing in the appliances aisle of a department store that 1) he knew nothing about how microwaves really worked, 2) he didn't know what model they even had in their new little apartment, and 3) he didn't know what part had even been broken when Hiro had overloaded the poor thing.<p>

The department store was too far from the apartment building to go back and then leave again with enough time before dark, Tadashi having rode a trolley across half the city before finally finding a map and locating the store situated in an odd, quiet niche of the city near to the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. He had amazingly only looked longingly at the campus - and its shining, wonderful, science filled buildings - _once _before focusing on his mission and moving on to the department store. He had had to opt out of going to college when threats against Hiro - business men, scientists, even _government agents, _all climbing out of the woodwork and lusting after Hiro's technopathic abilities - had begun to pop up, and then when everything had climaxed and they had had to leave their home with their Aunt, that only made it all the more difficult for Tadashi to even _think_ about one day attending college or studying robotics. The department store near to the college that had loomed in his dreams for years was likely located there for all the robotics or engineering students, with the sign in the window boasting 24/7 hours of being open even further proving that.

So now he stood in the appliances aisle, staring at the multitude of different microwaves, with a crumpled wad of bills in his pocket and not even recognizing their microwave amongst the ones presented.

"I'm such an idiot." Tadashi groaned, bringing his hands to his face and dragging them down over his eyes.

A group of chatting students turned the corner and entered the aisle then, and Tadashi instinctively lowered the brim of his hat as he continued to stare searchingly at the microwaves. Being seen through a grainy store camera that couldn't easily identify his face was one thing, but being seen in person was another, and he couldn't risk leading any threat back to Hiro.

There were four students, all of them arguing about something, but doing so in playful tones that were only touched by genuine annoyance in rare moments.

"...well we wouldn't be here buying a new microwave for the _whole lab_ if Fred hadn't been doing- Fred, what the hell again were you doing?" The shortest of the group, a punk and sporty looking Asian girl - perhaps Korean? - was saying as they came further down the aisle. She blew a bubble of gum then and popped it noisily, sliding her eyes to meet the gaze of a tall, lazy looking guy with a beanie on his head.

"Uhhh, experimenting? Duh." The guy - Fred - responded, grinning.

"Well you shouldn't have used my chemicals without asking." A tall girl responded, her skin a tan shade and her voice holding a hispanic accent as she admonished her friend with a pout. She wore lots of bright yellows and oranges.

"Yeah, you could've blown the whole place up, man. Just leave the science to us, ok?" Said the final member of the group, a broad shouldered man with very dark skin, a green sweater, and a stern expression.

Tadashi turned his head down and pulled on his cap more as the four came closer - not noticing the shortest girl staring at him curiously. He supposed he could forget the microwave for now, get food and supplies first, go back to Hiro, and then come back to the department store the next day. Yeah, that was a good plan. He could come back during the middle of the day then, and avoid the student rush that seemed to be going on right then. As the group of students came closer, Tadashi quickly stuck to his decision, turned and began to leave. He tried to walk away as casually as possible, with his head still turned down and his hands now in his pockets.

"Hey!" A voice called out.

It was the voice of the short, sporty girl who had been observing Tadashi without his notice, loud and obviously calling to him. Tadashi froze, wondering what part of his behavior had prompted her to boldly call out to him, and almost didn't turn to acknowledge that he had heard her.

"_Gogo!_" The green sweater wearing man hissed chastisingly. Gogo? Perhaps that was her name, as odd sounding as it was.

Tadashi, against all better judgement to simply ignore the group of students and walk away, turned around to address them all smiling in the most confused and innocent manner that he could. "Uh, yeah? me?" He asked.

The entire group of the four friends walked over and stood before him, and the girl popped her gum loudly again to direct Tadashi's attention to her once more, "Yeah, you. You look familiar." She said, eyeing him again, "You go to SFIT?"

Tadashi blinked in genuine surprise at that. He had always strived - unlike Hiro, the dirty little fluff ball that he was - to keep his clothes nice and keep himself from looking like a street kid, but the fact that this girl before him mistook his normal level of rumpledness for college student level rumpledness was, well, a little interesting.

He had to answer truthfully though, "Sorry, no. I don't go to SFIT." He had stared longingly at the campus earlier, but that meant nothing, "I mean, I do like robotics-" He cut himself off before he could start, and finished on an odd note by throwing the question back, "Do _you_ go to SFIT?"

"Of course." She answered without hesitation.

"We all do!" added the taller girl behind her, smiling kindly, seeming to understand Tadashi's discomfort as she stepped forward a bit and extended her hand in introduction, "Sorry- Hi! People call me Honey Lemon. The rude question asking one is Gogo Tomago." Honey Lemon continued, nudging her shorter friend playfully after she and Tadashi had shaken hands. Gogo rolled her eyes and blew a bubble of gum, but did look somewhat apologetic.

"Yeah, sorry about that. You just looked familiar." She shrugged, "Had to make sure, yknow. Would've bugged me all day if I hadn't."

"Uh, well, that's okay." Tadashi answered with a shrug, still wondering if it was too late to make a retreat.

"So hey man, what's your name?" The boy with the beanie on who Gogo had called Fred earlier said, almost lunging forward into Tadashi's space.

Tadashi blinked, thinking of Hiro left _alone _in their apartment, of the many times they had had to give fake names to keep themselves off of anyone's radar, of the long, long time on the road with just the two of them. As he looked at the group of students, all looking curious and kind, Tadashi felt something within himself give just a little bit. These people were not a danger as far as he could tell, so there was nothing wrong with giving them his truthful name and maybe socializing a bit.

"Tadashi Hamada." He answered, smiling in a friendly manner, allowing the tense line of his shoulders to relax just a bit. Hiro would be fine alone in the apartment for awhile while he shopped and talked with this group. Hiro would be fine.

"I'm Fred." Said the boy who Tadashi had already identified as Fred.

Gogo saw Tadashi's expression and rolled her eyes, "He probably already knew that. Heard me yelling at him did you?" She directed the last part of her question to Tadashi, who nodded in the affirmative.

"What did you even _do_ to the microwave?" He asked Fred in an amused tone, genuinely curious.

The last person, the largest of them all who had yet to introduce himself, stepped forward and nudged Fred roughly in the shoulder. "Let's not talk about it, it was too chaotic for words." He nodded then at Tadashi, "They call me Wasabi - even though I only spilled wasabi on my shirt _once_." Wasabi said, throwing a sharp glare at, oddly, both Honey and Fred. Tadashi couldn't help but laugh at that - the first genuine laugh he had had that wasn't Hiro induced that he could remember in a long while.

"So, what are you doin over here looking for a microwave?" Gogo asked then, still eyeing Tadashi curiously, "Mr. not a SFIT student yet in the department store that usually only students shop in."

Tadashi felt the tension return to his shoulders, as he stiffened in either warning or preparation to run. So that's why he had caught the group's attention. He wasn't a fellow student of theirs and yet was on their turf. "_You gotta get better at blending in Tadashi!" _Hiro had admonished him once when the younger Hamada's dangerous behavior had just begun, a bruise on his young face and his arm bleeding from a cut that an angry bot fighter had managed to land on the small child, "_You'll stick out like a sore thumb every bot fight you go to if you don't!"_

"_You stick out too yknow." _Tadashi remembered himself responding, picking at Hiro's torn jacket sleeve, making a mental note to either sew it up himself or have Hiro hijack a sewing machine in a craft store or something to do the job for them.

"_Yes, but I'm _supposed _to." _And those words had given Tadashi enough anger at Hiro's lack of self-preservation and fuel for nightmares of his brother being noticed in a crowd and carted away from him to last for weeks.

He swallowed thickly, and kept up the charade in front of the group before him though, even as his thoughts turned over and over on themselves. Hiro was home alone still. Alone. "I broke something in the one at my apartment, and rushed out here looking for a department store without even checking the make and model." He explained with a self-deprecating chuckle, scratching at the back of his neck, just at the line where his hair disappeared beneath his dirty baseball cap, deliberately not mentioning the fact that he had a brother.

They didn't notice or catch onto his lie at all, and Tadashi found himself chuckling with them all as they began to joke about broken microwaves.

When he mentioned that he had just moved to San Fransokyo, and that his apartment was new so it wasn't his fault if he didn't know the microwave was on its last leg, Honey jumped on the chance to show him around the city. Tadashi, upon looking at the kind and interesting faces of the people he had only just met, couldn't help but agree. He needed to know the area after all, just to be safe.

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><p>"Tadashi! <em>Finally <em>you're back. You gotta see this, its the _coolest thing_ I've ever put together!" Hiro announced without missing a beat, pulling the door wide open for his older brother as Tadashi struggled to enter the apartment, arms laden with bags of food and supplies. He had had to lug the bags onto the trolley all the way over to the apartment complex, and it had not been easy.

"Y'sure?" Tadashi grunted, moving over to the kitchenette and trying not to let anything in the bags get damaged as he dropped them with a heavy, climactic thud to the small counter. He brushed his hands off and began to work on unloading the food from the bags and putting them in their proper places, like the fridge and pantry, "Cause I thought Megabot was the coolest thing?" He asked his younger brother, turning only for a moment to raise an eyebrow in Hiro's direction.

But Hiro wasn't by the door anymore, Hiro had bolted back over to the table which, in Tadashi's absence, had ended up covered in technology, wires, metal, and various other things that Hiro had managed to get his hands on over the years and use for his inventions. Hiro had taken over the table as his work table, and with a sigh, Tadashi resigned himself to sitting on the bed or floor while eating meals.

"Yeah, okay, Megabot _was _really cool." Hiro said, grinning at the bot in question lying on the table with all the rest of Hiro's things, which was out of commission at the moment for repairs. Hence the other, less advanced robot that Hiro had been forced by Tadashi to abandon at the bot fight a few days ago. "But this, this is gonna be even _better." _

Hiro scooped up something from the table, something small and black that Tadashi just caught a glimpse of out of the corner of his eye, and hopped over eagerly to his older brother with the new creation in his hands. Tadashi paused in putting away the food to give his little brother his full attention.

"So I was taking an inventory of all the junk I still have left to make stuff with, and I realized I don't have enough for any full on bots right now." Hiro began to explain, still with his hands cupped, "So I began to fix Megabot up a bit, and I got to thinking about magnetic bearing servos, but like I said, I don't have much in terms of supplies right now. So I thought then, what about if they were _smaller? _What could I do with them then?" Hiro beamed his full, gap toothed smile at Tadashi, and unfolded his hands to reveal a small, rough, black bot that looked like one of Megabot's sections. It was obviously unfinished, without the cool and put together look that Megabot possessed, but Tadashi couldn't help but widen his eyes and grin at his brother proudly anyways. "Its just a prototype, and super unfinished, but eventually there'll be a whole bunch of this little guy! I think I'll call em Microbots, cause they're like Megabot, but-"

"Smaller." Tadashi finished, reaching out to ruffle Hiro's messy hair. "This is great, Hiro. And to think, I was worried you'd be out at a bot fight again while I was gone." Hiro huffed, and Tadashi's grin only grew.

Hiro pulled his microbot in close to himself and straightened his back, trying then to look theatrically haughty. "How dare you. I am a Hamada, and we never go back on our word."

Tadashi rolled his eyes, and went back to shoving a small jug of milk into the fridge, "Except for the times you went back on your word."

"Okay yes, but this time, I was far too excited to get a start on this." Hiro responded almost immediately, moving in closer and crowding Tadashi only slightly as he launched back into explanation mode, holding the microbot in his palm up close toward Tadashi's face. "I was gonna make up plans for a neuro-cranial transmitter of some sort to control them, since they will be so super small, but then I realized, hey, I don't need one o those!"

Tadashi pushed Hiro's hand away only slightly, just so he could speak without having Hiro accidentally toss the unfinished first microbot down his throat. "Aw, so we lowly humans with normal brains don't get to command these microbots?"

Hiro grinned, and in response to Tadashi's teasing the small bot in his hand astonishingly jumped to attention and balanced on one of its pointed ends for only a moment, before tipping over and resting in Hiro's palm once more.

"Nope!"

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><p><strong>Please review!<strong>


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: *sits here vibrating because of all the follows/favorites/reviews* wow wo wo wow wowww. thank you all so much! - ok, but other than thanking you all, there is one thing i'd like to address in this author's note before we get on with the story. Baymax. A lot of you lovely reviewers have been wondering when he's going to come into the story, and honestly at this point in what i've got planned for this plot, if Baymax is present he will likely NOT have been built by Tadashi. In the movie, it took what looked to be months, maybe a year or more, for Tadashi to build Baymax and work all the bugs out of his coding. In this AU, he doesn't have months OR the college education/resources available to him for a project such as Baymax. I might be able to work around that, but until then, I'd like to ask you all to keep an open mind and be patient with me please! my first fics for fandoms always tend to be messy plot-wise *side eyes Greatest Need so hARd* and all the positive reviews have really reassured me thus far that this fic is doing alright. thank you!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Tadashi left early the next morning for the microwave parts, when Hiro was still asleep. When he returned, ready to fix up the appliance, Hiro was awake. Sitting at the table he had turned into his work table, Hiro's back was hunched and most of his excitement to build the microbots from the day before was gone.<p>

"It's got _so many_ bugs." Hiro groaned, working a small tool on the sole existing microbot. "_So many._" Tadashi watched as Hiro sat back, stared intensely at the tiny bot for a moment, then groaned and went back to leaning over it with the tool when all the bot did was spark instead of stand up as it had the other day.

"Well, you didn't expect to get it right the very first try did you?" Tadashi asked in amusement as he walked over, snagged a tool from Hiro's desk, and went back over to the microwave. Hiro didn't even notice the screwdriver's absence.

"No of course not." Hiro grumbled, yet still sounded incensed, "But it stood up yesterday, you saw it! I thought I had made a major breakthrough!"

"Well, if its not working now and it was yesterday," Tadashi answered, tone distracted as he was focused entirely on making sure he didn't electrocute himself following the instructions to fix the microwave, "Maybe look for a new angle." He suggested with a small shrug that Hiro did not see, sticking the screwdriver into place and beginning to work.

Hiro let out a frustrated breath of air and pushed away from his microbot, letting his thin back hit the chair and allowing his shoulders to slump, "I should've just tried to make another fighting bot with these scraps." The younger Hamada complained, gesturing to the mess of metal pushed to the other side of the table, "Now I'm going to be fixated on this and it's going to take _forever." _

Tadashi glanced up from the microwave at that, sensing an opportunity in the air, "Do you think you're gonna work all day on that microbot then?" He asked, trying to seem casual and not to seem eager, thinking of the offer made by the group of students the day before to be shown around the city. His phone - an old, dinky model long outdated that had been with him since highschool and still somehow managed to function - held Wasabi's phone number in its contact list, as he was the one with the car and would contact the others of the group for whenever Tadashi was available.

Hiro leaned forward and let his forehead thump against the table once, then twice, his hands and arms still free to gesture wildly. It made for an odd, amusing picture, and Tadashi couldn't help but smile at his genius of a brother as the other boy spoke in an exasperated tone, "I'm gonna have to! I can't leave half these bugs alone for long, much less take a break and risk forgetting what I'm supposed to fix. I can't even imagine the mess this'd be if I had decided to add a neuro-cranial transmitter into the mix."

Tadashi turned back to the microwave, "You never forget that kind of stuff though, don't worry." He popped the old, blown, bulb out and began to open the new one's box. "But, I guess since you'll be working and all, you won't mind if I go out later then?"

Hiro's back stiffened suddenly, as if he had just been shocked, and he pulled his head up from the table to spin and stare at Tadashi so quickly that Tadashi feared he might knock himself and his chair to the ground with the fast motion. For a moment, the two Hamadas stared at each other, Tadashi with a half opened box in his hands and Hiro with his small fingers clenching around the edge of the chair's back.

Hiro narrowed his eyes then, "You never go out when we settle down places, except for shopping." He stated, a tone of suspicion in his younger voice.

Hiro, the boy who ran off bot fighting without a moment's notice and put himself in danger without letting Tadashi know time and time again, was suspicious. It was almost laughable. Tadashi tried to shrug off his younger brother's suspicion though, "San Fransokyo is a busy place, Hiro. I just thought it'd be good to get to explore around and get a feel for the city should anything happen." He said pointedly, eyeing Hiro, obviously referencing all the times that they had had to run from angry thugs after a bot fight, or slip around through back streets because the police were driving by, and two obviously on-the-run kids were not the most innocent looking people.

Hiro's expression and tone did not change, his eyes still narrowed and examining his older brother, "You've never gone out to explore the places we stayed in before."

Tadashi shrugged, and began to put the finishing touches on the fix done to the microwave. It had been relatively easy to replace the bulb, which he was grateful for. "San Fransokyo is a bit busier than the other places we've stayed so far. Better safe than sorry."

A moment passed, with Tadashi subtly holding his breath waiting for Hiro's verdict. He would be going out anyways - the "big brother privilege" card would have to be played - but it was always good to get confirmation from Hiro that the boy wouldn't be angry with him or follow him.

Hiro's nose scrunched up, and he spun back around to face the microbot on the table, "Alright." He said, waving a hand dismissively in the air, "Let me know of where the hardware stores and bot fighting hot spots are though."

Tadashi grinned at the victory, and stood up, heaving the newly fixed microwave up with him. Now there was the matter of getting it back onto the shelf above the stove where it had been resting before. "Hardware stores, yes. Bot fighting hot spots? Not a chance." Tadashi struggled with the heavy appliance, trying to get leverage underneath of it in order to push it up onto its shelf. Eventually he managed to do so, but with a lot less ease than he should have been able to. He would have to start practicing his karate and working out again it seemed, for how could he protect his brother if he couldn't even lift a microwave.

"UghhhHH fine." Hiro groaned, beaten, "Just, have fun exploring or doing whatever it is you do, you nerd." The microbot sparked, and Hiro let out a small yelp at the unexpected shock.

"Well if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black." Tadashi mumbled teasingly, gathering up the empty bulb box and broken bulb in order to throw them out. Hiro whipped around in his seat again to glare at his brother, and Tadashi began to laugh with his entire body when the younger Hamada _did_ tip himself over and crash to the ground that time.

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><p>Honey Lemon had taken to the prospect of giving Tadashi a tour of San Fransokyo with such honest enthusiasm that it was like a breath of fresh air for the older Hamada. Fred was right behind her in the rankings, eagerly and dramatically telling Tadashi stories of different events that happened in places they would pass only for a moment. Wasabi and Gogo followed up the group, smiling in amusement at their friends and ever so often putting in their own two cents. Tadashi was quickly catching on to all of their different personalities, and he found himself, surprisingly, sliding right into the middle of the group. Balancing the wide smiles of Honey and loud words of Fred with the steadiness of Wasabi and independent attitude of Gogo seemed so easy, which honestly was putting Tadashi somewhat on edge. If he - and Hiro - were to form connections with anyone, it only made leaving whatever city they had taken refuge in all the harder.<p>

Tadashi's chest still hurt when he thought of his Aunt.

"OH oh!" Fred blurted, bounding up toward the entrance to a park situated near the center of the city. It was rather nice, with a cobbled path cutting through its center and lovely trees of pink dotting its greenery. "This is the park where the San Fransokyo Criterium ends. It's this super sweet bike race that goes on for a whole day." Fred then turned and nudged Gogo in a friendly manner, and Gogo tried to scowl at him, but ended up grinning just a bit, "Gogo here's placed twice in it. Her bike is the most awesome thing- I keep telling her to add rockets or thrusters or somethin to it though, cause that's the only thing at this point that'd make it _awesomer."_

Gogo rolled her eyes snapped her gum, and shoved Fred away, "I keep telling you, anything to propel the bikes is illegal in the race." She then turns and addresses Tadashi, "Thankfully though, customizing your wheels a bit isn't illegal in the least." Her eyes flash with satisfaction, and in that moment Tadashi can almost see the speed hungry racer she likely became in the bike race, and he only became more curious.

"So what exactly _did_ you do to your wheels then?" He asked as they all walked through the center of the park and emerged on the other side, heading deeper into the more corporate dominated areas of the city.

Gogo shrugged like her modifications that she made were no big deal, but the satisfaction and pride in her expression was still present, "Electromagnetic suspension. Zero resistance, faster bike."

Tadashi let out a low whistle, and smiled appreciatively. He had never heard of someone daring to use electromagnetic suspension on wheels of any kind before, with too many things that could go wrong at any moment weighing heavily upon the minds of those that might think of it. But Gogo had taken the chance, and now her tone implied she was working upon perfecting something she already had working nearly perfectly. Hiro would have loved her. In fact, Hiro would have loved all of them.

Tadashi pushed the guilt rising in his throat away - he was protecting Hiro, protecting him - and instead turned his attention to the unfamiliar buildings around them, "So, where are we now then?" He asked, addressing the general group.

Wasabi answered, nodding his head at an impressive cluster of sleek chrome buildings further down the street, "Right there is one of Krei Tech's buildings. Aleister Krei has got his base right here in San Fransokyo. It's pretty great actually. Lots of opportunities for inventions or breakthroughs made at SFIT to reach their ears."

But Tadashi hadn't heard much of Wasabi's explanation past _Aleister Krei has got his base right here in San Fransokyo._ If Tadashi had known, he and Hiro would have never come. They would have bypassed San Fransokyo, rode the dirty bus a few miles further, and stopped off at whatever city was next. Because Krei Tech was dangerous. The name itself had red flags going up in Tadashi's mind and memories pouring themselves into his ears. Memories of a dark night just weeks before he was to graduate high school, when his Aunt opened the door of their house after the doorbell had rung shrilly in the silence, and a man had stood there with a charming smile. He had asked to see her young genius of a nephew.

"_Oh my! This is certainly unexpected. Well, yes, this is Tadash-"_

"_I'm sorry ma'am. I meant your _other _nephew." _

Hiro had returned after talking with the man - in private - with a crisp white letter grasped in his small hands. Tadashi couldn't remember now what the letter had said, only that he had taken it from Hiro and hidden it where his younger brother never found it.

"Tadashi, are you ok?"

He glanced at Honey Lemon, rubbed the memories from his eyes quickly, and grinned.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, just got lost in thought there." A quick flicker of a glance was sent down the street Krei Tech's way. The silver K with its curling design stood out against the wall of the dark building. He grinned. "Let's keep going, I was promised a tour of the best of San Fransokyo!"

Honey Lemon still looked a small bit concerned, but quickly grinned at seeing Tadashi's grin. Fred immediately began to bound ahead of them all again, enthusiasm back and better than ever. Tadashi didn't notice Gogo and Wasabi watching him with odd expressions upon each of their faces, and followed the continuing tour, smiling a smile that didn't feel right on his face until they were out of the corporate district.

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><p><strong>Please review!<strong>


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: i'm posting this chapter so very soon after just posting chapter 4 because I may have to go on a short hiatus for awhile. I've no idea when I'll be able to post the next chapter or write really because I have a loooooot of work to do irl. school midterms as well as college application deadlines are fast approaching, and I have yet to apply anywhere o~o;; so yeah, hope you all enjoy like this chapter and the _massive _cliffhangers I leave you with! :D just remember i do it because i love you.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**WARNING: this chapter and the chapters onwards contain _major_ spoilers for the movie. If you've been reading without having seen the movie (which, tbh, I don't understand. pls see the movie. its so good) then I highly recommend that you DO NOT read further. **

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Tadashi knew he should have ducked out the moment Honey Lemon had suggested taking him to see their lab at SFIT. He knew he should have, and yet he followed anyways, the allure of seeing the inside of the fantastic college building he had seen before far too strong to fight, and now he didn't know if he'd ever be able to leave.<p>

The lab space was _amazing. _Though it was home to the work of multiple students at the institute, each student still managed to keep their work separate from the work of others. Each student had a corner or a space set up for them specifically, where they could experiment or invent to their heart's content. Gogo had a corner where her bike was suspended, its wheels idly rolling where they were suspended electromagnetically. Wasabi's area was taped off with caution tape, very neat, and housed a nearly invisible wall of ultra precise lasers that could be extremely dangerous should one be unaware of their presence. Wasabi demonstrated that the light of the lasers could be increased to show they were there, which relieved Tadashi greatly. Honey Lemon's space was a mess of beakers and chemicals, with shelves of elements behind her and a large hatch in the floor meant for holding _something _that differed from experiment to experiment. Fred, surprisingly - or unsurprisingly - wasn't a student at SFIT, but rather was an English major at a different University in San Fransokyo even though he was the mascot at SFIT. However, he had his own space as well, a corner of the lab near the exit door where a beat up lounge chair had been shoved and stacks of comic books rose like city buildings. Tadashi had snorted in amusement at that, but easily had gone right back to admiring all the wonderful technology.

"This is amazing," He breathed, once again attracted over to Wasabi's lasers, looking at their conduits with wide eyes, "Hiro would _love _this."

Hiro's name had just slipped out, the idea of his little brother being as excited as he was in this lab coming to mind easily and naturally. He had done his best to be careful about letting the four others know of Hiro's existence - a rather paranoid act that might not have been entirely necessary, but comforted Tadashi all the same - and now all his efforts had been for naught.

"Who's Hiro?" Gogo asked.

Tadashi didn't tense up, staying casual as he turned and smiled, "Oh, he's my little brother." He answered, and then shrugged, "He really likes inventing things - we both do. I just thought he'd like this is all."

"Well hey, why isn't he here?" Wasabi commented.

"Ohh if he'd like this, you should've brought him, Tadashi!" Honey Lemon said.

Tadashi winced, "Well, I dunno if-"

Fred bounded into the conversation then, "We should all go get him and bring him back here, c'mon man you can't just leave your little bro out of all this awesome sciency stuff!"

As if swept up in a wave, Tadashi found himself suddenly sitting on a trolley with his four new friends, on his way to the apartment where Hiro was sitting and working on his microbot completely oblivious.

This could not possibly go well.

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><p>"Tadashi! Glad you're back." Hiro shouted the moment the door opened, not bothering to turn around and see the four other people gathered with his brother. "I need your advice on this thing. I managed to fix the issue with the sparks it was giving off every time I tried to get it to function - a loose <em>really tiny <em>wire - but I'm still having trouble getting both sides to operate separately. If I don't, it'll just be able to roll around and stand up, not bend or curve at all." He held the microbot up between his pointer finger and his thumb, and squinted at it. Then, he turned around, still staring at his bot, "It's really coming along though. I'm glad I-"

"Hiro."

It was Tadashi's tone that had Hiro halting. Slowly, he lowered his microbot down from in front of his eyes and focused entirely on his brother. And the four people standing there with him.

Tadashi grinned sheepishly, shrugged, and said, "Hiro, these are- uhm- some friends of mine." He could see the panic rising in his younger brother, "We met yesterday and they offered to show me around San Fransokyo, and now they wanna show you their lab at SFIT. It's really cool."

Honey Lemon grinned and waved at the younger Hamada, cheerily smiling and saying, "Hello Hiro!" as she did so. That was when Hiro broke from his frozen state and everything went to hell.

In an instant, Hiro was up from his chair and backing towards the far wall, "Tadashi- what- how could you- you made _friends?!" _He said in a shocked gasp almost accusingly. "You made friends and you _brought them back here. _No. No no. You don't get to do that." His fear was steadily turning to anger, and Tadashi took a few steps further into the apartment with his hands up. An angry Hiro was never something that was safe, whether it lead to technology exploding or vicious bot battles late at night as retribution.

"Hiro, c'mon. They're really nice and they-"

"They could be spies!" Hiro shouted, microbot rolling and jittering in his hand, "They could be undercover cops! Aren't you always the one telling me to be careful about giving my name out or going anywhere or even _talking _with people- and now you do _this!" _

Gogo stepped forward then, eyes narrowed on the younger boy who was throwing a tantrum without reason. Or at least, not a reason she could pin point. "Hey! Calm down, kid. We aren't cops or spies. Your brother just wanted to-"

Hiro's eyes narrowed, "That's something a cop or a spy would say." He hissed, an almost childish response if not for the completely serious way he said it.

"Why would you even think we're cops or spies?" Wasabi questioned, and Tadashi tried to place himself between the four and his brother, tried to get them to stop before something went too wrong.

In response, Hiro said nothing, but the oven built into the stove had a large door on it, and that swung open to strike Wasabi in the thigh.

"Ow!" Wasabi yelped, jumping away from the oven door and rubbing at his leg.

"Hiro!" Tadashi snapped, and Hiro's angry gaze turned on his brother.

"Don't you lecture me. _You_ brought them here!" Hiro snarled, clutching his microbot close to his chest. The tech pieces on the table began to rattle the moment the microbot could not move in Hiro's tight grip.

"Woah, what's even going on?" Fred said, eyeing the table almost excitedly, "It's almost like some kind of superhero power meltdown's goin on right now."

Tadashi turned to gape at Fred, and Hiro's eyes went wide. The tech immediately halted, and for a tense moment, silence reigned within the room.

Then, Megabot - which was still not fully operational - jumped to its feet, spun its top section so a small red face with an angry expression colored on it was facing outwards, and flew toward the four SFIT students.

Hiro grabbed his blue jacket in the same time it took Megabot to leap up and lunge for Fred's head, and raced for the door as the other students worked to help their friend. He found himself stopped though, as Tadashi intercepted him and wrapped his much stronger arms around Hiro's middle, pulling the kicking and squirming technopath up into the air.

"Hiro- Hiro call off Megabot!" Tadashi yelled, concerned for his friends as Megabot jumped from Fred to Gogo, wincing as Hiro's feet struck his knees.

"No! Let me _go _Tadashi!" Hiro cried out. Then his microbot was dancing over Tadashi's face, jabbing at his forehead, and Tadashi let go when the small bot managed to poke him in the eye.

The bot returned obediently to Hiro's hands when the boy's sneakers touched the ground, and as Tadashi rubbed at his throbbing eye, Hiro yanked the front door open and disappeared out into the hallway.

"Hiro!" Tadashi called, running forward for the door himself, trying to reach his younger brother, eye watering. He stumbled though when Megabot leaped daringly from the top of Wasabi's head to his though, and in that stumble, hit his head _heavily _against the door. When he slumped, unconscious, to the ground, Megabot crawled away and went back to torturing the other four in the room until Hiro was too far. Then, like Tadashi, it powered down and similarly crumbled to the ground.

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><p>Hiro thought about going to a bot fight, just to spite Tadashi, but instead found himself sitting alone on a bench in a park he couldn't remember running to. He had ran so far from the apartment, betrayal fueling his legs until he could run no further.<p>

Tadashi had always yelled at him, had told him to stay out of the spotlight and not go anywhere or talk to anyone, and then he had showed up with _four _other people. And he had expected Hiro to be alright with that?

"_Yes! Lets go see this lab you're so excited to show me! Let's go see where you could have been working and living your dreams if you hadn't had to run with me to keep me safe! Yes Tadashi, lets go and put ourselves right into the line of sight of the exact kind of people who'd be after me in the first place! It'll be all fine and dandy!" _

Hiro slumped on the bench and hung his head, turning the microbot over in his hands. "Yeah, like I'd have ever been alright with that in a million years." He grumbled, "What was he even thinking? That knucklehead."

He hadn't had the chance to grab anything else in his haste to simply get out of the apartment, not his spare parts or his bag or anything other than the small microbot he had been working on. Now, he really did look like a street kid or a homeless kid, with his dirty blue jacket on, sitting on a park bench, with no possessions to his name. He could have taken Megabot with him probably, but then he would've been more tempted to bot fight. While he tried not to feel guilty about the way he had sicced his fighter bot on Tadashi's new friends, in the long run that course of action had practically forced him to leave Megabot behind, and he was somewhat grateful for that.

Having Tadashi have to come pick him up in a jail cell and then leave the city immediately would have been worse than having Tadashi come confront him in a public park, doing nothing wrong.

He still hurt though, and hoped that Tadashi and his _friends _took a long, long time to find him.

It was at least another half hour before someone found him, and it wasn't Tadashi or any of his friends.

"Well, that's an interesting piece of tech you've got there."

Hiro jerked, startled at the sudden voice, and turned wide eyes up at the man who stood before him. The sky was growing dark, and the light in the park was dim, but Hiro could still see that the man had broad shoulders and a square jaw, but a kind face with soft eyes that made him look like a born father figure. He was looking at Hiro's microbot, and the small boy was amazed that anyone would have been able to recognize the tiny invention as a piece of technology, when it was so small that it was more likely to be mistaken as a trinket or piece of jewelry.

"Oh, uhm, yeah. I, uh, I built it myself." Hiro said, trying to stay calm. He flourished in the atmosphere of bot fights, where there were so many people with all their focus upon the bots, rather than him. He could put up a mask and a cocky front easily in those situations, but one on one, being asked about his technology, any front Hiro tried to put up would fall through and he knew it. He was worse at interacting with people than Tadashi was. He had never had friends when in grade school or high school to talk with like Tadashi had.

"Mind if I take a look?" The man asked.

A red flag went up in Hiro's mind. "Uhm, sorry, No. It's still in development and I wouldn't want it to - to become messed up by accident or malfunction in your hands or anything."

The man nodded, not seeming to be offended, and then smoothly gestured to the vacant stretch of bench beside Hiro. "Mind if I sit with you though? I was taking my normal evening walk after classes and thought you looked a bit lonely. A bit of company never hurt anyone."

Hiro, still cautious, nodded slowly. His mind, meanwhile, was whirring and connecting dots from what the man had said. Classes. The nearest school was SFIT, just a few blocks down from the park, a trolley ride and a hill away from the apartment - gosh, he had ran a really far distance, no wonder his legs ached so much. The man was too old to be a student. Possible grad student? No, he held himself with too much pride and the air around him didn't seem to be stressed. Teacher? Professor? Mentor? All those options were likely.

"So, what's your name?" The man asked.

For a vicious moment, Hiro was strongly tempted to give his legitimate name. Tadashi likely had introduced himself to his friends as Tadashi Hamada, so why couldn't Hiro do the same? That temptation fled though as the red flag stayed present, erected in his mind and waving itself before his eyes. "Hiro. Hiro Takachiho." He answered. "And you?"

With a kind smile, the man extended his hand Hiro's way and answered, "Nice to meet you Hiro, I'm Robert Callaghan."

The red flag was swallowed up in a wave of shock and starstruck-ness.

"R-Robert Callaghan?" Hiro said, "As in, the inventor of magnetic bearing servos, and Callaghan's Laws of Robotics?" His voice might have cracked. Maybe.

Callaghan chuckled, and nodded. "Yes, that's me. I'm surprised someone as young as you is familiar with my work. You must certainly have quite a bit of intelligence."

Hiro flushed from his neck to his ears, and rolled his microbot in his hands. "Uhm well, I guess I do. I mean." He shrugged his shoulders and tried to compose himself. "Well, I guess, you could look at my microbot. Now that I know you know how to, uh, handle things such as this." Hiro offered.

With slight surprise, Callaghan accepted, "Thank you." He plucked the bot from Hiro's small hands, and held it up close to his eye. "Incredible." Callaghan breathed, turning the bot over and staring at its still open sections. "I've never seen such advanced systems on something so small, but I can clearly see it's still in the works."

Hiro felt he might die from all the praise. "Yeah. It's definitely got a way to go."

With a smile, Callaghan returned the microbot to Hiro, "Even just from seeing this, I can tell it will be marvelous when finished."

"Thank you." Hiro said in what certainly was not a squeak.

Callaghan merely smiled at the younger boy for a beat, and then, he hummed as if in thought and leaned back against the park bench. "You know, Hiro. I've been working on a project of my own for some time. A fresh young mind such as yourself would certainly be a great contribution. Would you like to help me out?"

The red flag waved itself feebly, but Hiro pushed it aside. "What- you're really offering to let me-" He gasped, "But you barely know me!"

Callaghan nodded, "Yes, that is true, but I can tell you like to be challenged, and that you're just the kind of person who can push the boundaries of robotics." He stood from the park bench, and offered his hand to Hiro again. "What do you say?"

Hiro stood from the bench as well, back straight in an attempt at good posture that might impress the man before him, "Oh, uh sure! Sure sir, Callaghan. Yeah. I should probably let my brother know first though, but I-" and then, in remembering Tadashi, he remembered Tadashi's _friends, _"Actually, I don't think my brother will mind. When do we, uh, when does this begin?" He reached out, and grasped Callaghan's hand in his own.

Callaghan's grip tightened then, frighteningly quickly, and the red flag became a wailing alarm. "Wha-"

"We can begin right now." Robert Callaghan said, then he yanked Hiro forward and knocked his free fist into the side of the fourteen year old's head. Hiro's microbot tumbled from his hands.

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><p><strong>ouo;; Please review!<strong>


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: So, here's chapter six! I managed to get online for a short while ever so often these past couple days to crunch this chapter out, and now I'm posting it. I've found I'm struggling/worrying a bit with Tadashi's character though, so I mean, if anyone would like to offer insight into what they think Tadashi's emotions/reactions would be in a situation such as this (and the rest of the bh6 gang as well!) feel free to tell me! Since he was only in the movie for such a short time and we only really got a glimpse of his character - caring, helpful, level-headed, intelligent, but teasing and encouraging - my brain is just pbftbtht-ing whenever it comes to putting him into a stressful situation such as this where he has been under stress and paranoid for a better part of a year on Hiro's behalf.**

**But yeah, hope you all like this chapter! Unsure of when the next will be up, but hopefully it won't be long. I'm still working on college application stuff though so we'll see.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>When Tadashi came to, he was first aware of how much his forehead and knees <em>ached. <em>

"Ugh, what hit me?" He groaned, reaching up one hand to rub at his throbbing head, his eye pulsing in time with his heartbeat as well. Then, he remembered.

In one swift motion, Tadashi was sitting up, eyes wide. "Hiro!" He gasped, before trying to maneuver himself from the bed he was lying in. He was hardly concerned with how he had gotten into the bed, when the last thing he could recall was knocking his head against the door as Megabot pushed him roughly into it, and instead was far more concerned with finding his baby brother.

"Woah! Slow down there buddy." A steady hand pressed itself to Tadashi's chest, pushing him back to the bed even as he had one foot touching the floor. Tadashi looked up to see Wasabi standing there, with Honey Lemon, Gogo, and Fred all standing behind him. Tadashi fought Wasabi's hand anyways.

"I'm sorry- I have to go and find Hiro-" Tadashi managed to say before Gogo roughly pushed herself next to Wasabi, and, glaring at the older Hamada, cut in.

"First, an explanation. Now."

Tadashi slumped against Wasabi's hand, and, cautiously, Wasabi pulled his hand away. Tadashi rubbed at his face and eyes, suddenly looking very weary in comparison to the frantic way he had awoken.

"Alright. I guess I owe it to you all."

Honey Lemon pressed forward and put her hand upon Tadashi's shoulder in a comforting manner, "It'll be alright." She said when he jolted slightly. But then Tadashi smiled gratefully up at her after a short split second of hesitation. He was so weak, to latch so strongly onto his first friends in years, and then to leave Hiro with no one.

With a sigh, Tadashi began, "So, Fred, that thing you said before I was knocked out, about a superhero power meltdown?" He chuckled mirthlessly, "Well, you weren't too far off."

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><p>"I don't want to do this." Hiro said out loud, head and jaw throbbing along the bruise on the side of his head as he spoke. He had woken up, with the last thing he had seen being Robert Callaghan's face, in an odd, dark room with a control panel along its front and large glass window just above that. The walls were cement and metal, and beyond the small room he had awoken in lied a large chamber with two large hoops of technology erected at the far end. One of the hoops was broken and collapsed in upon itself though, its metal twisted, warped, and rusted. The other hoop seemed to be in pristine condition though.<p>

Callaghan frowned at him, and the grip on Hiro's shoulder tightened. "You _will _do it." He said, without trying to force Hiro into it with an ultimatum. The dark tone of his voice was threatening enough to have the teen fighting his instincts to try and run or to tremble.

"No." Hiro responded, staying strong, staring at the portal before him. Callaghan had told him of what he was expected to do with his "_above average intelligence and knack for robotics" _- nevermind if Callaghan knew of his _other _talents, then he probably would have kidnapped Hiro even faster if that was possible - and Hiro would not take part. He would not help to destroy the livelihood and life of Aleister Krei, a man whom he could only remember from what seemed like a million years ago, just because Callaghan had issues with misplaced grief over his daughter and had seen Hiro's intelligence and age as a convenient combination to exploit. "I won't help you to get petty revenge and destroy however many more lives. I won't."

Callaghan's grip became painful, and Hiro let out a small sound of pain as the older man whom he had once idolised yanked him forward and toward the large dip of the room that led to the floor. The floor was far below the two portals, the portals themselves suspended high away from them likely as a safety precaution to keep the floor from being sucked in during testing. There was only one ladder leading down to the canyon like space, and that was what Callaghan was shoving Hiro towards.

"Fine. I'll let you cool down for a bit then." Callaghan said, releasing Hiro's shoulder and letting him stumble toward the ladder. Hiro rubbed at his shoulder and glared back at the older man. "I need to go get some supplies to work on it anyways." Callaghan gestured to the still intact of the two portals, before he motioned for Hiro to head to the ladder.

Under Callaghan's watchful eye, Hiro hesitantly began to descend the ladder. Once he had reached the bottom though, there was a soft, echoing beep, and then the ladder slid itself up the wall and away from him.

"When I get back you better be ready to work, _Hiro." _Callaghan's voice echoed, accompanied then by the clack of the professor's shoes as he walked away, and the slam of a door as he was gone.

In the loneliness and darkness of the cold metal canyon though, Hiro smiled. The ladder was electrically raised with the push of a button, and so could be electrically lowered _without_ the push of a button.

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><p>Despite the best efforts of the four SFIT students to make sure Tadashi wouldn't burn himself out searching, Tadashi was frantic in the search for Hiro. He proceeded as if determined, as if he had a level head and knew exactly where to go and that everything would be alright, but on the inside scenarios as to what could happen to his younger brother were swirling in his mind. Each scenario becoming worse than the last. Hiro getting hit by a car and there being a horrible car crash - like the one that stole their parents from them - was one of the worse scenarios. It was right up there with Hiro going to a bot fight and then being beat up and left to bleed out in an alley. Which was right up next to Hiro's abilities being revealed and him being kidnapped away for a whole new nightmare's worth of reasons.<p>

"Tadashi, I'm sure he's fine." Honey Lemon said in a soothing tone, the optimistic one of their group, picking up on Tadashi's obvious worry for his younger brother.

Tadashi nodded once. "Yeah. Okay." He said, running his hand up beneath his hat, through his hair, and then to pinch at his nose. The group moved steadily toward another popular bot fighting spot. The last couple spots had not yet filled up with people, and the fights had not yet begun, despite the steadily darkening sky, and Hiro had not been at any of them. Tadashi knew in his mind that it was unlikely for Hiro to have gone to a bot fight, Megabot resting at home where it had collapsed after Hiro had gone too far to still keep his mental grip on controlling the bot's mechanisms. Though Hiro liked to boast that his abilities took no effort, more than once Tadashi had woken up in the night to see Hiro sitting before a piece of technology, staring intently at it, with his hands gripping the thing in effort to form a connection and sweat glistening on his forehead. Some technology was just harder for the boy to tap into than others, some had larger ranges, and some Hiro could do nothing with at all.

They had to take the trolley to get to the next bot fighting spot, which was completely across town and close to the park they had visited earlier that day - had it really only been earlier that day? It seemed like so much time had passed from the moment Tadashi had fixed the microwave and gone out to explore the city with people he had hoped he could call friends to the moment where he had woken up ten minutes after Hiro had fled the apartment, angry betrayal settled deep in the last glimpse of his eyes that Tadashi had seen. Ten minutes had been far too much of a head start for Hiro though. Just enough for Tadashi to lose him.

He remembered shaking Hiro's shoulders and yelling at his brother to stay safe and away from the spotlight else he get taken from Tadashi, and his chest clenched painfully. Selfish. That's what Tadashi had been. He tugged the brim of his hat down so the hat sat tighter on his head, and plowed onto the trolley the moment it stopped for them without waiting for Honey, Gogo, Wasabi, or Fred. But they followed him anyways, all looking mildly worried and even a tad bit guilty, though the guilt they felt was misplaced, as Tadashi knew it was all his own fault.

The trolley was slow, and the five of them sat in silence. All the SFIT students unsure of how to deal with their odd runaway friend. They had only known him for two days now, how could they be sure of what to say that would soothe him or send him into a rage? Though Tadashi hardly seemed the type to get worked into anger anyways, so there likely was no trouble of that.

Then the trolley passed the park and the street that led to some of the small bit of Krei Tech's entire industry, and suddenly Tadashi was yanking upon the emergency stop cord. As the trolley screeched to a slow stop, he stood up and lunged his way to the door of the trolley without warning.

"Wh- Tadashi!" Wasabi was the first to gasp, as they all tried to follow the older Hamada as he bolted his way across the street toward the park. His hat fell off as he ran, but Gogo scooped it up to return to him when he finally _stopped. _

When Tadashi did stop, it was when he had gone completely through the park, and now he stood at the mouth of the street that could be looked down to see the buildings of Krei Tech. His expression was unreadable to his four friends as they finally caught up to him, and Gogo scowled as she stretched and crushed his hat back onto his head.

"Ack-! Hey-"

"We're helping you whether you want our help or not, so don't randomly run off of trolleys like a lunatic!" Gogo said forcefully.

Tadashi blinked, adjusted his hat, and sighed. "I'm sorry." He said. Gogo nodded and Wasabi patted his shoulder. Then he turned and looked back at the Krei Tech buildings, "I just… I have a really bad feeling. I think that-" Tadashi reached up a hand and rubbed it down his face, pinching at the bridge of his nose. "I was worried before, when I had heard that Krei Tech had its base here. They… Krei Tech has given Hiro and I trouble in the past. I just, got a really overwhelming feeling and had to get off that trolley before we passed by."

Fred jumped in then, eyes wide, "Has Krei Tech tried to exploit Hiro's _super powers_ before?" He gasped, looking both worried and excited. Tadashi leaned back from Fred just a bit, before sighing.

"They're not super powers. We don't really know what it is." He muttered uselessly, "And yeah. He came to our house a few times before we went on the run. Aleister Krei himself."

"And you think Krei has Hiro?" Wasabi questioned incredulously, "We haven't even finished searching the city. We shouldn't jump to conclusions like this!"

Tadashi clenched his fists, and frowned at the chrome buildings, "Yeah, we shouldn't jump to conclusions, but sometimes looking at things from a different angle helps."

They turned to walk back through the park then and wait for another trolley to take them to the next bot fighting spot on their list. It was certainly dark enough now for the first few fights to have begun. The group was brought to a stop once again though, as Honey, Gogo, Wasabi, and Tadashi continued walking when Fred suddenly paused. Those of the group that had continued walking noticed after a moment, and paused as well to turn and look at whatever it was Fred was doing.

Fred was peering intently at the ground, and then he bent to pick something up, "Hey, Tadashi, man, isn't this the thing your lil' bro was ranting about when we went to your apartment?"

Tadashi's eyes widened as, through the dark light, he spotted a small black item the size of a quarter held between Fred's flat fingers. "Hiro's microbot." He breathed, hurrying over to Fred and taking the offered invention. "Hiro would never leave this behind."

"Tadashi, don't o-" Honey Lemon began to say, but Tadashi cut her off uncharacteristically rudely. He had been feeling detached and uncharacteristic of himself all night, and now, with Hiro's microbot lying lifeless between his fingers, the line had finally been crossed.

"No! He'd _never_ let any of his tech stay behind. Even before, he'd only abandon something if we had to get out of someplace fast or if it was too dangerous to keep with us." Tadashi explained, letting the small, unfinished bot roll in his hands, "And he was still working on this too." He lifted his head ever so slowly then, and stared once again towards Krei Tech, eyes dark.

"Remember what I said about not jumping to conclusions?" Wasabi chipped in, "Yeah, now would be a really good time to exercise that!"

"I'm not jumping to conclusions."

"Oh, really?" Gogo said, with a worried frown.

Wasabi continued on, trying to deter Tadashi, " Yeah, cause it seems like you're about to ju-"

"Aleister Krei has my brother, and we're going to get him back. No matter what it takes."

There was silence, and then,

"I'm pretty sure this is about to become our origin story guys." Fred said.

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><p><em><strong>Please review!<strong>_


	7. Chapter 7

**AN: author's notes are odd. like, what do I write here? do i reference the previous chapter? do i reference my real life? do i ramble on and on about any topic of my choosing? I dont quite know. Anyways, I have a feeling you all will like this chapter, despite how short it is. i finally figured out how to incorporate something into this story that i previously thought I wouldn't be able to incorporate. soooooo yeah! ;)**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>An island.<p>

Hiro had made it out of the cement compound, the massive building with skull and crossbones and toxic waste symbols left and right, only to find out he was on an island.

_A god forsaken island. _

"URrgghh." Hiro growled, reaching up and running his hands through his hair, wincing as the side of his head throbbed when his fingers pressed too close. He had no idea when Callaghan would be back also, and until then, he was as much of a sitting duck as he had been back in the empty canyon beneath the portals.

Hiro pulled his hands from his hair and began kicking at the boxes that were littered around by the gate which spanned the perimeter of the building. He was too frustrated and stressed and _scared_ at the moment to even care that one box might hold explosives or something else dangerous like that. Most of the boxes were metal or wood, and very much empty, thankfully, and Hiro viciously fought them as if they had personally insulted him.

Of course, he should've expected that eventually, his worn shoes would be unable to protect his feet. With one misplaced swing, Hiro had brought his foot crashing toes first against the side of a box that most certainly was _not _either metal or wood, but was in fact a concrete block of some sort that he just hadn't noticed. With a yell of surprise and pain Hiro toppled backwards to the ground, tripping over and reaching for his throbbing foot at the same time.

"Ugh- Ack! _Ow_!"

Just behind him, an odd hiss of air suddenly came from one of the wooden boxes, one of the heavier ones that hadn't budged when Hiro had kicked it. His hands froze against his foot, and he turned his head slowly, eyes wide, fearing to see Callaghan standing there with a dark expression. But no, instead, the box - clearly labeled along the side with the curling K customary of Krei Tech - was bulging oddly, as if something inside was trying to push its way out on all sides.

With a frightening crack of old wood, the box finally broke, and something pure white with dirt smudged across it, looking like a large balloon, rose up from the inside. Hiro blinked, and the white thing blinked _back. _

"He-He-He" It's voice glitched from disuse, however long the robot had been trapped inside the box as an abandoned project on an abandoned island certainly taking its tole. "Hello." It finally managed to get out, all the while with Hiro gaping at it. "I am Bay-bay-baymax. Your personal he-he-healthcare compannnnnnion. I was alerted to the ne-ne-need for my services when you said, 'Ow!'"

It walked forward, its balloon legs looking slightly deflated and unable to hold its girth up at is wobbled toward Hiro. A screen flickered to life on its - _Baymax's _- stomach, light faded and the edges looking to be a pixelly low quality brought about by damage. Ten smiling faces, ranging from a pure smile to a full frown with tears, lined themselves up upon Baymax's stomach for Hiro to view. "On a sc-c-c-c-ale of one to ten, how would you rate your p-p-pain?"

Slowly, Hiro's frustration and fear faded away. He rubbed at his foot once, and then grinned a small, thoughtful grin up at Baymax. "Uh, zero." He answered, then standing.

But Baymax pushed forward, massive balloon stomach bumping into Hiro's personal space. "D-D-Does it hurt when I to-touch it?"

Hiro's thoughtful grin and ideas fell away in the face of the large robot unexpectedly wobbling toward him, one puffy finger outstretched toward Hiro's foot. "Uh- No touching please-" Hiro said, trying to push Baymax's hand away. "Baymax-"

"I wi-wi-will scan you now."

Hiro paused at that, "What- no! Don't scan me!"

But Baymax had already leaned away, something behind his beady black eyes clicking noisily until after a minute, it stopped. "You have a slight bbbbbruise on the top of your: left foot. As well as another mild bbbruise on: your right temple. Concussion from this mild trauma: un-n-n-nlikely. However, dizziness and di-disorientation during the healing of this injury and strenuous activity may occur. You are also experiencing slight sleep-p deprivation and have less tha-tha-than the recommended le-level of nutrients."

Hiro's mouth fell open at the report that Baymax had just rattled off, stating Hiro's physical state. Though the robot had stated that it was a "healthcare companion" for some reason Hiro hadn't believed Baymax to be competant or coded so well as to provide such an accurate and thorough diagnoses, simply with one quick glance. Why on earth had the poor robot been scrapped and left to waste away on this… this _demon _island, when it was clearly such a wonderful and correctly functioning thing? How long had it been active within that box, battery power dwindling away, waiting to be brought back into the world to help people?

Without hesitation then, Hiro nodded, "Wow, that was really good Baymax." He said warmly, almost proudly. Stepping forward - with only a slight limp, his foot still sore - Hiro pressed his hand directly upon Baymax's stomach. The immediate rush and pulse of the wonderful technology beneath the non-threatening, huggable design of the balloon body was like a breath of fresh air to him. Hiro's grin widened into something genuine, with underlying cleverness, as he looked up into Baymax's blinking black eyes. "Yeah, really good."

He could _use _this.

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><p>Wasabi had been the most wary about letting Tadashi into their lab.<p>

"Okay, be careful _not to touch:" _The man had said, before listing what seemed to be an entire inventory's worth of things for Tadashi to leave alone. If he hadn't been so worried for his brother, Tadashi would have been insulted. After all, _he_ had been the one to build that shopping cart rocket for him and Hiro back when they had both been in high school. _He_ had been the one to introduce Hiro to the magnetic bearing servos that Hiro later refined and put together to create Megabot.

"Oh come on Wasabi, be quiet." Gogo said, stopping Wasabi's rant and taking the words right from Tadashi's mouth - not that he would ever feel comfortable saying such a thing to anyone other than Hiro, really, especially not to his new friends. "He said before that he was interested in robotics, and did you miss the robot jumping on your head that his brother made? I think Tadashi knows his way around science." She then shot Fred a glare, reminding them all of the incident - _an exploded microwave - _which had brought them all together, "Unlike _some _people."

Fred smiled easily and shrugged, "Eh, guilty as charged."

Wasabi sighed, and then addressed Tadashi again, "Alright, so what's the plan?"

Tadashi put a hand to his chin and glanced around the large lab, that thankfully, at such a late hour so early in the school year, was empty aside from them. Also, no one wanted to be in the lab without even a microwave for snacks. A microwave that should have been bought the other day when the four SFIT students met Tadashi, but that still for some odd reason had not been.

"We're gonna be able to take on anything that might keep us from Hiro." Tadashi muttered, heading over to Honey Lemon's chemical stained lab space and inspecting a few of the beakers, full to the brim with odd colored liquids with curling labels slapped haphazardly on the sides. "And so save someone with a…" He hesitated, before giving in, "superpower, you have to get superpowers of your own."

Fred let out an odd, excited squeal that had Tadashi turning and laughing despite the tense situation, and Gogo pounded a fist in a stern but friendly manner into the comic book nerd's arm. She and Honey Lemon looked interested though, and Honey Lemon definitely had an odd gleam to her eyes as she flickered a glance over the chemicals that Tadashi was standing so close to. Oh goodness, what was he getting himself into?

Wasabi spoke up though, sounding a tad hysterical, the voice of reason but also the voice of worry of the group. "What but- what do you think we'll have to go up against huh? We're just nerds!"

Tadashi moved from Honey Lemon's chemicals over to Gogo's bike, hanging suspended upon its hooks in the air directly in the middle of her station. What was he getting himself into? _What was he even thinking? _"No." Tadashi said, reaching out to spin one of the wheels, watching as the sleek disk rotated around and around. "No, to help my brother, we need to be more than nerds. We can be more."

He glanced back to his friends, and he hoped that, despite the short time they had all known each other, they trusted him as much as he quickly found himself trusting them. They all looked dual parts excited and curious now, all of them with their vastly different concentrations and abilities.

He could _use_ this.

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><p><strong>Please review!<strong>


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: heyo \o/ Ghost is back and ready to party. jk jk. not much to report other than i've no idea when the next chapter will be out, and i'm sorry for the huge delay on this one. lots of irl stuff is going on rn, not to mention im trying to kick my merlin fics back into my head. gotta finish those up too. however, the big hero 6 hype is still strong within me, and tbh I dont think it will fade for a long. long time. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Aleister Krei was a man of business by nature. He liked to joke that he had been born doing business, wearing a suit and tie with his charm and all, right from the womb. Second to being a man of business though, he was a man of science, but not so much as doing the science himself as he was of promoting it. It was harder work than it seemed though, and Krei often felt - unfairly, as he was the rich head of the company - that he didn't get enough credit for supporting and finding not only up and coming inventors as well as numerous other scientific and educational breakthroughs.<p>

No, Aleister Krei thought as he stared at the five shadowy figures before him, who had cornered him in his office the moment he had walked in that morning, he certainly didn't get enough credit for this job. He had entered his spacious office that day ready to get some more business done, crunch some more numbers, check in on his researchers, and then the door had slammed behind him and he found himself suddenly realizing he'd likely be doing none of those things that day. How they'd even gotten into his office, past the high security, wearing outfits like _those _was unfathomable.

The five looked to all be young, maybe college age, each with a different style to what was obviously supposed to be some sort of combat gear that they wore. Some of the pieces they wore were very high tech, and contrasted greatly to the rest of their outfits which looked to be scrapped together in haste. Haste to get to him, which, any other time would have flattered Aleister Krei and given his ego a boost, but right now he was honestly wishing it had been haste to get anywhere _else_.

"Aleister Krei." Spoke the one which was obviously the leader, a black haired, broad shouldered young man by the looks of things, who wore blacked out protective science goggles over his eyes and had white, metallic, 3D printed armor-esque plates on his chest and shoulders. He wore a utility belt as well, which had bags hanging off of it filled with things that Krei would rather not think of, though in reality they were likely just tools. Not weapons. Not weapons at all. Hopefully.

"Y-yes?" Aleister answered, swallowing his stutter. He wasn't afraid, these were just young hooligans trying to intimidate him.

"Where's my brother?" The leader demanded.

The rest of the team behind the white suited one nodded with the question, and Krei found his gaze drawn to the intimidating figure with the pure black bike racing helmet, and next to the blue hoodie wearing one who had a frightening Kaiju mask covering his face. They were the shortest of the group too, the two taller figures seeming marginally less intimidating, despite the one with the martial-art-master aura being the largest and strongest looking of them all.

The leader reached out and grabbed Krei's shoulder, and shook him once, snapping the business man's attention back to him, "Where is my brother?" He asked again, obviously fed up with the delay.

Krei put his hands up, noticing faintly beneath his churning thoughts that it was odd they didn't restrain him, and answered honestly, "Brother? I've no idea who you're talking about."

The white suited man paused, seem to take an intellectual step back as he realized that with the darkened goggles on Krei would have no idea who's brother to even think of, and then rephrased and elaborated, "A boy, about fourteen years old, went missing near to a few of Krei Tech's main buildings. I want to know where he is."

But Aleister still spluttered, "Why would we take a random kid- what is even going on right now?"

With a growl of frustration, the white suited man seemed to have had enough, and he ripped his goggles from his face. The rest of the group backing him up all jerked in surprise - obviously the plan had been to not reveal their identities at all, after all, they had already committed a crime by breaking and entering. "Here, understand why you'd want a _random kid _now?" He said, voice an uncharacteristic tone of frustration and desperation.

Aleister Krei, upon looking into those revealed dark brown eyes, recognized the young man immediately, "Hey, you're that Hamada kid, the older one!" He blurted out, eyes wide as Tadashi narrowed his, "Tadashi, right?" He had last gone to the Hamada household nearly a year ago, the last attempt of many to get the youngest Hamada, who was a genius the likes of which San Fransokyo had never seen, into a contract with Krei Tech. Such an asset could not be wasted, and so Krei had, time and time again, personally offered letters and bonuses and anything he could to get little Hiro Hamada onto his side.

But Tadashi Hamada had practically slammed the door in his face every time.

Krei kept speaking, cutting off Tadashi as he opened his mouth, one realization leading to another "Oh I get what this is about now- I'd never kidnap a kid! I mean sure, I wanted your brother to work here when he got a bit older, yeah," Krei scrambled to defend himself, "But kidnapping is a bit too much. Do you know the legal circus that would happen if news of it got out? No thank you."

"He's got a point." The pink suited, tall woman in the back spoke up.

Tadashi didn't turn to acknowledge her at first, simply stared at Aleister Krei and breathing deeply, judging if the man was being truthful or not while fighting his desperation that was telling him that _Krei had Hiro, definitely, no doubt. The microbot was abandoned in the grass, and so close to Krei Tech's base. There was no other conclusion._

"Where else could he be then?" Tadashi said eventually, stepping away from the businessman, who still held his hands up by his ears in a surrender position. Krei slowly lowered them the moment Tadashi had stepped more than three feet away, "Krei, if i figure out you're lying about where my brother is-"

"Tadashi, relax man." The hoodied figure with the Kaiju mask said, coming up and placing a hand upon Tadashi's shoulder, "I really don't think he's lying about kidnapping your lil bro, it doesn't fit his character type."

The largest of the group gave out a groan, "Here we go again, Fred-"

"No! C'mon hear me out!" Fred said, still with a hand on Tadashi's shoulder, his other hand coming out as if to pose in the air while he illustrated his thought. Krei, who previously had been intimidated by the anonymity and dark blue spikes of the monster inspired mask, now eyed the boy appraisingly. These suited figures were nothing more than nerdy college students, roped into the delusional thinking that they'd need to be ready to take on some kind of super-villain, which Krei knew he certainly wasn't. "Krei, the accidental pawn of the story, luring us away from where Hiro _really _is, meanwhile, the real villain is out there, taking advantage of Hiro's technopathic abilities, and we're-!"

Tadashi had moved his hand quickly, pushing up the Kaiju mask to cover Fred's mouth with his hand. Though his eyes were not angry, they were wide in what looked to be horror as they slid over to Krei, as if checking that the man really had heard that.

Krei _had _heard it, but in all honesty, other than increasing his want to get Hiro at Krei Tech, he had lost true interest in the Hamada's when they had fallen off the radar nearly a year ago, after- what was it, some incident with the Yakuza? Perhaps Hiro's newly revealed technopathic abilities were to blame for that incident, and for Krei losing his opportunity. But it couldn't be helped now, and Krei certainly wasn't going to further prod the Hamadas now either now that he could see the lengths they would go to and could go to for each other. This was far too deep and messy for him to get involved in and still profit at the end of.

"Ssmuhrry Duhdahsheh." Fred mumbled under Tadashi's hand, as Tadashi and Krei were locked in a staring contest.

But then Krei shrugged, and some kind of tension bled from Tadashi's shoulders. He released his friend, took a deep breath, and then said "It's alright, just, be careful with what you say, 'kay bud?" Tadashi said, nudging Fred on the shoulder before reaching up to rub his hands down his face again - a nervous habit that the rest of the team had already all noticed. "But if Hiro isn't here, then where is he?" He just wanted to help his little brother, and everywhere he went was turning up dead ends.

No one had an answer.

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><p>Hiro was nearly done with the second to last piece when he was interrupted.<p>

The hum of a small boat of some sort alerted him to the fact that Callaghan was back, and he jerked away from the piece he was working on in his lap to stare out over the harbor and watch the small water vehicle approach.

"C'mon Baymax, time to move." Hiro muttered, standing up, tucking all of the light metal armor pieces beneath his arm and grabbing one of Baymax's hands with the other. He pulled the healthcare bot along behind him, heading back toward the huge building he had escaped from before. Callaghan had been gone nearly a full two days to likely tie up loose ends before he went off the map - two days without Callaghan was two days without food though, as Hiro's grumbling stomach reminded him. Baymax had also repeatedly reminded Hiro to eat and sleep, but instead, Hiro had waved the robot off and continued to scavenge for parts he could use to build his and Baymax's way out.

Baymax's feet squeaked against each other as he bobbed and walked behind Hiro, and Hiro winced with each sound, especially as the distant hum of Callaghan's boat got closer and closer. Hiro let go of Baymax's hand to push at the door, feeling panicked when he realized that it had sealed itself shut behind him, and nothing less than a passcode or a laser was going to open it back up again.

"Okay, okay Baymax, lets go this way instead." Hiro whispered, taking Baymax's soft, comforting hand into his own again and dragging the slow robot off the beaten path. They made their way to a walkway that led around the perimeter of the building, situated in the shadows on the opposite side of the island from where Callaghan was getting onto the island. The concrete was more broken up and dirty where they walked, jagged bits beneath Hiro's feet tripping him occasionally as he hurriedly walked with both his hands occupied.

In the distance, the sounds of the boat abruptly shut off. Hiro bit his lip with his front, gapped teeth to keep in his breathing as he and Baymax continued on. They were just far enough away to hear the great metal door at the front of the building slide open, and yet for Callaghan to not hear their footsteps or Baymax's balloon-like squeaks.

Only when the huge doors boomed shut did Hiro breathe again.

"Hah, we made it. Kinda." Hiro breathed to Baymax, grinning up at the black eyes set into that white balloony head. "Just gotta finish up your stuff here." He hitched the half finished armor, which was all folded and tucked beneath his arm, higher in his grip.

"I am ggggglad," Baymax answered, voice a bit louder than Hiro would have liked, and he almost felt his breathing stop again, "That this is improving your mental st-t-t-tate."

Hiro grinned shakily, and nodded, still leading Baymax further into the shadows and dirt, "Yep, it is definitely improving my mental state." He said, playing along with the ploy he had used to get the caretaker bot to follow his commands without him having to use his technopathic abilities. Those would come into play later. Definitely.

Abruptly, Hiro stopped, and Baymax bumped into the young teens back as Hiro released Baymax's hand and facepalmed spectacularly, "I could've just ordered the doors to open!" Hiro lamented, jamming the heel of his palm against his forehead, "Stupid brain! Ugh!" Though, seeing as how Callaghan was now inside that building, perhaps hiding inside would not have been beneficial.

There would have been more rooms, hallways, and floors to duck into though, rather than feeling the exposed coldness of open air brush past his face.

With a shake of his head, and one least rub of his palm against his temple - which still throbbed - Hiro took Baymax's hand once again and walked until they reached a mall loading station at the back end of the side of the building. The station was unkempt and overrun with plants curling at its edges, but the space was large and otherwise clear. The heavy duty garage door that it led to seemed to be permanently shut, and the set in section of the building provided a nice alcove that Hiro examined appreciatively. Here, he could finish the last bits of his and Baymax's upgrades, and then, they'd be getting the heck off of that island and back to Tadashi before Callaghan could do anything else. After he would be finally back safe with his brother, Hiro rather liked the next step of watching Callaghan get taken off to jail in cuffs for kidnapping and premeditated murder. Then, he would return to _Akuma island_ on his own to let his - hopefully by then perfected - microbots dismantle the portal that Callaghan had so wanted him to fix.

"Your neurotransmitter levels have changed, are you alright?" Baymax asked. Hiro spread the cobbled together armor pieces out on the ground before him, and reached for the nearest - one of the final incomplete pieces.

"I'm fine." Hiro answered, knowing he needed to work fast before Callaghan found him. With just a thought, the tech-infused piece of armor in his hands bent and curved perfectly to the shape he wanted. Hiro reached forward, slid the newly curved piece into another curved and ready piece, sat back to admire his handiwork, and reached for the next unfinished bit.

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><p><strong>Please review! please please please!<strong>


	9. Chapter 9

**AN: Not much to report here. Still in a panic about irl things. Still procrastinating, still loving Big Hero 6. I'm sorry for the rest of the gang not exactly having a large role in this fic, but they will later on when stuff starts heating up. This story is very much Hamada-centric, but everyone loves the Hamada bros, so I hope that makes up for it all. Next update will be unknown/whenever. Thank you all so much for all the many many many reviews and favs and follows. I never expected such a response to this story, and it's been so great to hear your thoughts and reactions. thank you again.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>A knock upon Krei's office door interrupted the hostage-but-not situation, and immediately all heads turned to face it. Krei tried to convince himself he was fine with seeing the five young adults caught and taken into custody for breaking and entering as well as threatening him, but upon seeing Tadashi's exposed and somewhat panicked expression, he cracked. The press would also have a field day with this event if it got leaked to the public, and Krei didn't want that happening, so he really wasn't doing this for Tadashi Hamada and his friends, not at all.<p>

"Quick, hide over there." Aleister said, gesturing to his large desk and the shelves beside it, both pieces of furniture together large enough to hide the group if they crouched and squished excessively closely together. Tadashi turned wide eyes and a flicker of incredulity crossed his face before he went to hide with the rest of his friends, his image of Krei that he had built up over the years of a selfish cold business man out to ruin lives likely dented just a bit by Krei's offering to hide them.

Ducking behind the desk and shelves, the group huddled together and held their breath. Krei then glanced over the furniture hiding the college students in the light of his office. After he was sure the young adults would not be seen unless he allowed whoever was at the door to enter too far into the room, he turned to the door to unlock it quietly, and then returned to lean casually against the front of his desk. "It's open."

The office handle clicked, and then the door swung open. Aleister Krei's personal assistant walked in, her black framed glasses hiding her eyes which were focused on the top paper of the stack in her arms. "Sir, sorry to disturb you." She said, in a tone which meant she really was not sorry at all.

Krei smiled a bit in relief that it was just his assistant who had entered, and not someone more nosey or someone who tried to suck up to him. He had hired this woman for the pure and simple reason that, while also being extremely intelligent and competent as help running his company, she also was completely willing to tell Krei exactly what was on her mind and hold nothing back.

"Yes well, it's no trouble really." Krei answered, still leaning against the desk, mindful of the children hiding behind it despite the fact that there was obviously no trouble. He had no idea why he was so worried for them though, but then he remembered Tadashi's angry expression, and the sight of a small, messy haired boy with a gap in his teeth staring at the Krei Tech envelope in his hands with trepidation and fear.

"I just wanted to inform you that Robert Callaghan has cancelled the meeting for tomorrow."

Those words had all of Krei's worry slamming back into his chest. He clenched his fingers against the side of his desk and pushed off it, standing straight and rigid in the face of such news. "What? But this meeting has been scheduled for weeks! He finally agreed to talk things over, what changed?" Krei asked his assistant, in shock.

The short haired, professional woman glanced up from the papers, sighed at the look in her boss' eyes, and pressed the stack of papers to her chest. "He has taken a paid absence from all his work as a professor at San Fransokyo Institute of Technology as well, to, and I quote, 'further his work on a new development.'" She explained, shrugging her shoulders in sympathy, well aware of the tense relations between Robert Callaghan and Aleister Krei after the death of Abigail Callaghan.

Krei huffed out a breath, and ran a hand through his hair, trying to remember the last time he had spoken to Robert Callaghan and the man hadn't been viciously glaring at him with blame in his eyes. "Alright, alright well… send him a note asking when he's available to reschedule." Krei said in defeat.

But his assistant looked genuinely apologetic this time, "In taking a break from working at the University he has silenced all communications with anyone for the time being. I phoned the University earlier to get his personal number to do what you just asked, and when I called it, curiously, went to static the first time, but then went to his voicemail later."

There was a muffled scritch of something on wood in the back of Krei's office, and other than a raised eyebrow in the face of her boss' suddenly stiff shoulders, the assistant did not acknowledge the sound. Krei responded to her quickly, "Well, thank you. I suppose we'll try to reach him in a few days then. This has to be done and he can't just keep pushing it off."

With a nod, recognizing by Krei's body language that he wanted her gone from the room, the assistant spun on her heels, tossed a few words of "Will do, Mr. Krei." Over her shoulder, and shut the door behind her.

As the latch clicked, Tadashi Hamada burst from behind the desk like a man surfacing for air after nearly drowning. "The static!" He blurted to a wide eyed Krei, and his large African American friend looking worried as he helped Tadashi to stand. They all looked worried in fact, even with their masks and hidden faces, Krei could feel the emotion in the air. "Hiro always - whenever he's around cellphones they go to static for the caller if you don't pick up instead of going to voicemail." Tadashi explained, adopting a more collected pace and calming down. "He's been working on it- but never really has had the chance to, cause our phones always seem to get busted one way or another and buying new ones has never been a priority." Tadashi pushed his way through his friends and back around to the front of the desk, all of them following him as if he were a mother goose and they his helpful little goslings.

Krei arched an eyebrow, trying not to connect in his mind what was connecting on its own anyways, "And this has to do with anything… how?"

Tadashi breathed out through his nose, and then surprisingly and abruptly, turned away from Krei "Robert Callaghan, am I to assume that this is the same Callaghan who wrote Callaghan's laws of robotics?" He said to his friends.

The young woman with the pink suit nodded, "Yes, he lectures for the advanced Robotics courses and mentors students who are usually working on something _big." _She said to Tadashi.

Krei, meanwhile, blinked. Ah, they were SFIT students. That explained the high tech and 3D printed parts of their combat gear.

Tadashi turned back to Krei then, "Your assistant, she said the first times she called Callaghan it went to static." There was a sharp gasp from one of the group behind Tadashi, but neither Krei nor the older Hamada turned to look at whoever had made the sound at the connection. "Why woud that happen. Where would Callaghan suddenly go when you have an important meeting." An important meeting that had taken months to even get Callaghan to agree to speak with Krei over the phone, let alone speak with him in person.

"You can't seriously be thinking our Professor has your brother." Spoke up the short one of the group, as she tugged her dark bike helmet from her head to reveal a plump face and Korean attributes beneath dark dyed hair to Krei. "C'mon Tadashi, your Krei theory held water, but you've never even met Callaghan. Why would he take Hiro?"

"Yeah, think logically about this Tadashi." Said Wasabi.

But Tadashi, with his fists steadily clenching, had had enough.

"Stop it. Are you trying to help me or not?" He snapped, voice a calm storm. "Ever since we got off the bus and found Hiro's microbot, it's been nothing but discouragement from you all - except Fred." Fred, the one in the Kaiju mask, gave a thumbs up "It's always 'calm down Tadashi' 'don't jump to conclusions Tadashi' 'think logically Tadashi.'" His face was twisting into a scowl, the likes of which Krei had only seen upon Tadashi's face over a year ago when he had accidentally said something far too cold to a young Hiro, and the boy had been stressed and panicked and his brother had been there at his back _glaring at Krei with all his young might. _"But how can I think logically when my brother is _missing _and someone is _using him?" _He took a break, breathing in to steady himself, "I should have never let you all help me. You don't even know us." Tadashi finished, before turning back to Krei, who felt extremely out of place in the dark situation he found himself in now.

"Tell me where I can find Robert Callaghan."

Aleister Krei, after a minute of thought, could only think of one place. His stomach churned in dispair as he looked into Tadashi Hamada's eyes and told him.

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><p>Hiro snapped the last piece of armor onto Baymax's stomach, stepped back, and grinned triumphantly, "Looking good buddy." He said, walking in a circle around the healthcare bot, marvelling at his own ability to create such a well put together invention in such a small amount of time and with the low resources that he had.<p>

Coming back around to the front of Baymax, Hiro took another step away, and then flexed his arms, "C'mon Baymax, show me whatcha got."

Baymax's mechanisms whirred, and after only a second of hesitation, he moved his armored balloon arms up and flexed as Hiro had done.

One piece of armor popped off of Baymax's shoulder, and Hiro's grin fell in the split second it took before every piece of metal that he had placed upon the bot was rocketing away, propelled through the air by the balloon body's tension beneath it.

"Yikes!" Hiro gasped, dropping into a crouch as the plate of tech infused metal on Baymax's stomach passed heavily over his head and rolled down the hill behind him, landing with a loud splash in the San Fransokyo bay. Hiro, still crouching, turned his head to stare wide-eyed over the embankment, and then, with a nervous chuckle, turned to face Baymax.

The white robot was standing there, innocent as could be, with only one bit of the armor still on. His helmet was securely held on and snug around Baymax's head, while every other bit of metal had failed.

Hiro sighed, stood up, brushed off his scraped knees, and went to go try and find some of the pieces that had been launched away. "Well, second time's the charm, right Baymax?" Hiro asked, his fingers trembling against a piece from Baymax's leg as he tried to fight down the panic and despair he could feel creeping up on him. Any moment now, Callaghan would stop looking within the building for him - for surely he would be looking, having noticed Hiro's absence by now - and would come outside to comb the island.

Hiro wouldn't fix that portal for Callaghan, and the old man likely knew it as a definite thing now, and Hiro didn't want to know what Callaghan would do to him in retribution or to try and force him to work on it anyways. Pushing him down into a metal canyon had only been the beginning, and Hiro was fourteen, and scared, and he wanted his brother and warm home and Aunt and cat back.

With a thick, heavy to drag in, breath, Hiro hefted the metal into his hands.

"I detect that you are breathing faster thhhhhan the normal rate. If you are experiencing: panic. Or: anxiety. I recommend deep breaths at a rate of 4 seconds intake, 5 seconds outtake, as well as repeating grounding thoughts to oneself and shutting one's eyes. Physical touch can either be beneficial or detrimental to one when one is panicking, and so physical reassurement is only recommended if the patient is comfortable with it and believes it will help them to calm down."

Baymax's sudden - and _loud - _ diagnoses startled Hiro, and he dropped the metal plate back to the ground with a frightening clatter. It continued to make angry metallic sounds as it rolled and slid on the concrete, "Baymax!" Hiro gasped, whirling on the bot, feeling his heart beat fast.

The clang from the metal and beating of his heart had kept Hiro from hearing the large door of the building groaning open.

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><p><strong>Pleaaaase review!<strong>


	10. Chapter 10

**AN: so i thought this chapter ended up a lot longer when I was writing it, but it turns out its not very long at all. ah well, at least you all get a quick kinda action packed update huh? :D next update will be unknown/whenever once again, i'm just gonna start saying that for all chapters in general - cause it all depends on how inspired to write I get and how much time I have to write. Thanks so much again for all the continued support, I really love you all who take the time out of your day to read my story and fav/follow or review it. i just wanna say real quick that this story is definitely my most popular story i've ever written, which is great because big hero 6 deserves all the love yknow. I'm thinking up more big hero 6 fanfic ideas as we speak (sweeps unfinished merlin stories under the r u g) and can't wait to get started on those too! :)**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>A large, threatening arm slung itself forward and around Hiro's small neck, and Hiro screamed slightly at the sudden attack. He dropped the armor piece he had picked up for a second time, as his thin hands immediately flew to the arm cutting off his air.<p>

"How did you get out Mr. Takachiho?" Callaghan grunted as he yanked the struggling boy back. For one disorienting moment, Hiro thought the man wasn't speaking to him, but to another accomplice out of his line of eyesight. Then, he remembered the fake name he had given to the man, and never had been more grateful for it. At least it would prevent Callaghan from finding Tadashi or Aunt Cass.

"I- Urck-!" Hiro spluttered, breath wheezing through his throat as he scrambled with blunt and dirty fingers to pull Callaghan's arm away.

"I'm sure your smart brain helped you, huh? And look, you've been making something to try and get away." Callaghan continued, voice almost mockingly conversational if not for the strained undertones. Hiro hacked and struggled. For a man so burdened by grief and age alike, he was surprisingly strong against the younger Hamada, who had also been trained by Tadashi in basic karate. No training could prepare a young, frightened boy for a sneak choke hold from behind though. "I knew you'd be a great asset. I knew it."

It was in that moment that Hiro realized something that he thought he already had. That his once idol, his kidnapper, the grieving father behind him, was completely one hundred percent off the deep end.

Fear flared in his gut, like a small candle flame that had abruptly burst into a roaring fire. "L-let go!" Hiro screamed after dragging in just enough air to do so, and then he kicked his leg backwards against Callaghan's knees similarly to how he had kicked against Tadashi when his brother had been holding onto him. Callaghan's chokehold loosened as the man let out a grunt of pain, but before Hiro could break away Callaghan's other hand came up and latched around Hiro's upper arm like a vice.

They both paused though when Baymax's gentle voice spoke up from across the cement landing, "I'm sorry, but you are damaging my patient's health and causing a negative reaction. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Hiro breathed heavily, his rasping breaths loud in the silence as Callaghan looked the large white robot up and down. Baymax had the helmet still on, but no other pieces of the armor, and so he did not look very intimidating. At least, not as intimidating as he would have been wearing armor and with Hiro at the controls. "A Baymax unit?" Callaghan said after a moment, taking a limping - Hiro felt pride flush through him at the fact that he had hurt the man enough to make him limp - forward and pulling the young Hamada with him by the neck and arm. "I thought Krei shut them all down." Callaghan grumbled, face twisting with disdain.

Hiro couldn't help but widen his eyes, and blurted out, "Why?"

Callaghan's grip tightened, but not around Hiro's neck, as he continued to stare ahead at Baymax, "They were too human. Only four were made and three of them began to question their programming and connect emotionally with their first patients. They didn't want to leave their patient. They became _friends_." Callaghan took a step away from Baymax, "The fourth one never left the box." His eyes flickered from Hiro to the healthcare robot, "This must be number four."

"P-p-please step away from my patient." Baymax said, taking a step forward the moment Callaghan had taken a step back.

Hiro, feeling the tense line of Callaghan's chest against his back, took a deep breath, and snapped his eyes up to Baymax's. He hoped the connection between him and the robot would be strong enough.

Immediately upon making eye contact with the young technopath, the cameras behind Baymax's eyes began to click and whir. The healthcare bot straightened and pushed its shoulders back, the stance powerful, but the white balloon appearance and lonely helmet still doing nothing for the intimidation factor. Baymax took one heavy step forward, "Please, step away from Hiro Hamada."

"Hamada…?" Callaghan had taken his arm off of Hiro's neck, but instead had both of the young boy's arms in his grip now. He was backing up quickly from the robot as it approached with a frightening speed that should not have been possible with its design, eyes wide in bafflement, "What's going on-" Callaghan's grip tightened on Hiro's shoulders, and Hiro fought to keep confident. "What did you do?"

Hiro swallowed thickly, and then with a cheeky smile he looked up into Callaghan's face, "Upgraded him."

Baymax's large balloon arm swung like an axe through the air and collided with Callaghan's side then. While the balloon outside would not have done damage normally, the carbon fiber skeleton on the inside managed to connect with the swing as well. Callaghan went toppling over, finally letting go of Hiro and letting the boy duck and roll out of falling with his captor.

"The armor was just to try and get off the island." Hiro said, making sure to put a great distance between him and Callaghan, who was struggling on the ground as Baymax continued to throw expert attacks his way. The wide girth of the robot made it difficult to escape from his range quickly though. "But I've always had a way with battlebots."

"Hiro-!" Callaghan yelled.

"Hold him for me Baymax!" Hiro said to the robot, before turning and bolting back to the font of the island, where he knew Callaghan's motorboat was waiting for him.

Hiro couldn't return for Baymax once he hijacked the boat though, and as he ran, the thought left a bitter taste in his mouth. Leaving Baymax behind with a man like Callaghan, surprisingly, _hurt. _

But Hiro knew that if he didn't get off the island one way or another, he'd be hurt a lot more. Baymax could be retrieved - and rebuilt, if it came to that - but Hiro doubted he'd recover very quickly if Callaghan got his hands back on him.

He was at the front of the island then, and the motorboat that Callaghan had docked against the rocks and hidden was now in his sights. Hope flared within him and Hiro put on a burst of speed, fueled by the rocking of the water against the boat's hull and the angered shouts of Callaghan in the background as he grappled with Baymax. He could feel his influence on Baymax fade with distance, sweat dripping down his face with the strain of moving forward but still keeping the robot behind him fighting. Hiro was almost there, he was _almost there._

Then, a helicopter descended from the sky. It crashed out from the clouds suddenly, almost silently. Hiro hadn't heard the chunk of its blades at all before it nearly crushed him trying to land on the cement landing. The young technopath yet out a yell of fear and surprise as the huge vehicle came down into his space. With a flash of heat and panic, Hiro, without even having to touch the mysterious helicopter, blew out all the controls inside of it.

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><p>The fact that Fred was ridiculously rich was a surprise. And by <em>ridiculously rich<em>, that meant the whole nine yards. A mansion, butlers, private choppers, the works. Needless to say, everyone had been surprised.

"I always thought you lived under a bridge or something." Gogo had muttered as she had clambered into the private helicopter that Fred had had his butler bring over. They couldn't take a Krei Tech copter - "_Are you kidding me? The news cameras would be on that in a second! This is where I leave you kids. Now get out of my office before I change my mind about letting you go and call security." _- to Akuma Island, where Callaghan and Hiro were, and so Fred had offered up one of his family's helicopters.

Now, Tadashi was practically vibrating in his seat. The air was surprisingly quiet outside, lacking in the heavy noise that usually accompanied helicopter travel. There was something about the helicopter blades that was especially unique as to provide quiet movement through the skies. Fred's father must have really been rich indeed to get his hands on such a vehicle.

"There it is." Honey said suddenly, who was closest to the chopper window, and had been peering out over San Fransokyo as they made their way to the bay. Tadashi squished his way against his friends so he too could look out the window, and immediately spotted the fog smothered, rather dead looking island. He squinted a bit, but could not see through the fog if anything was happening.

"Take us down, Heathcliff my man!" Fred called to the butler, who was flying the helicopter. The fact that the butler knew how to fly a helicopter had been another surprise to everyone.

"Yes, sir." Heathcliff answered, voice a tad louder than it should have been with the headphones over his ears, despite the lack of noise from the helicopter blades. The helicopters bulking mass began to descend, heading for the large patch of concrete that could be seen through the San Fransokyo fog.

They had nearly touched down when Tadashi caught a glimpse of Hiro's bruised and terrified face through the window. Then every single electronic gauge and control within the helicopter exploded, similarly to how the light bulb of the microwave had.

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><p><strong>Please please please review review review! <strong>


	11. Chapter 11

**AN: So I hope everyone who celebrates Christmas had a merry Christmas, and everyone who celebrates Hanukkah had a happy Hanukkah! And all those other holidays that happen around this time, I hope you all who celebrate those had happy times too! **

**So I actually planned to do more with this story (for anyone who's read/seen images of pages of the _Baymax_ manga, and know the scene with the portal and Tadashi, I'd been toying with the idea of going down that sort of line with this plot but twisting it to suit my needs) However, this chapter kind of wrote itself. My fingers were flying and my mind was a slave to this sudden plot development. So, instead of a more intense continuation, this story looks like it will be finishing up rather soon, on a rather good note, after only a few more little bumps for our team here. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>The helicopter seemed to freeze in the air for a moment, and then, with all its controls blown out, it careened sideways to crash into the ground meters away from where Hiro had scrambled to a stop. The cement screeched against the metal side of the helicopter, and bits of both broke upon impact. Hiro fell and scrambled backwards from the wreck he had created, his eyes wide as the lingering heat of his abilities faded from his bones. He didn't even know who was in the helicopter, and he could have possibly just <em>killed <em>them because he let his emotions get out of control.

_Of course, _some vicious part of Hiro's mind hissed as he watched the smoke rise from the front of the copter, _They could be back up for Callaghan. _But no, after the death of Abigail, Hiro could not see Callaghan as the type to connect with others or lean on them for support. If he had, then he wouldn't have become so twisted by grief and a need for revenge that he kidnapped a child. Even if Callaghan had colleagues or friends though, there was barely a chance he'd tell them of his plan here on Akuma Island. So no, the people in the helicopter certainly were not back up for Callaghan.

So then who were they?

The door of the helicopter, which was on the side that hadn't been crushed into the ground, groaned as someone from the inside pushed it open. Hiro held his breath, barely moving as Callaghan finally broke free of Baymax and approached from behind while mysterious figures crawled out of the helicopter ahead.

He had been so close. _So close. _And now he was cornered on all fronts.

Another odd flash of heat rushed through his mind, and the doors leading into the compound opened faster than they ever had before. Hiro's gaze shot to the sudden opening, which was a further distance than he was from the helicopter, but still worth a shot. He hesitated, body jerking slightly as if he made to run but then stopped himself, still watching the helicopter as five figures crawled from its smoking depths.

Hiro risked one glance behind him, saw a battered and bruised Callaghan approaching with a menacing scowl on his face - Baymax was lying on the ground behind him, one of his pudgy legs deflated and helmet gone - and then made a break for the open door. Hiro didn't want to stick around with whoever was in that helicopter and an angry, crazy old professor who had possibly killed his healthcare companion.

"Wait, Hiro!" Coughed out one of the figures - the one clad in white - who had managed to get free from the helicopter wreckage. Hiro had already made it too far to hear the weak call though, and slipped within the huge building just as Tadashi managed to gather enough air to shout his brother's name at a volume he would have heard.

Then, Tadashi raised his eyes, about to go back to help his friends before racing after Hiro - he couldn't just leave them there after all, even if he had no longer wished for them to help him - and his gaze met Robert Callaghan's.

He recognized Robert Callaghan immediately, after seeing that face smiling and pleased on the covers of dozens of robotics magazines, it was hard not to. Callaghan obviously had no idea who Tadashi was though, and he glared nastily at the older Hamada and the helicopter behind Tadashi before racing after Hiro into the building.

Tadashi threw his friends a quick glance, just to check if they were going to be able to get out alright, and then abandoned his idea of helping them in favor of going after the man who had kidnapped his brother.

"Tadashi!" He could hear them call out behind him the moment they noticed where he was running to, but he did not stop.

The rest of the group watched their friend run and disappear into the building behind their Professor, and each of them pulled themselves and helped the others from the helicopter with renewed determination.

"We have to go after him." Gogo said, helping Honey Lemon stand after the taller girl had stumbled from the open door on the skyward facing side of the helicopter.

"Ok," Wasabi said, bracing himself as he tripped a bit, and then pointing to a nearby sign on the fence enclosing the area, "But do you see that sign? Quarantine. It says quarantine."

Gogo glared at him, rolled her eyes, and then grabbed Wasabi's hand to pull him forward even as he protested. Honey Lemon followed shortly after them, and Fred - after checking on his butler to make sure the eternally patient man was alright - came along as well.

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><p>The inside of the huge building, which Tadashi determined very quickly had been used for the more dangerous types of scientific endeavors, was very dark, and very hopeless looking. The metal walls practically weeped with "<em>Bad things happened here" <em>vibes, and bounced around the sound of his frantic foot steps and Callaghan's footsteps ahead of him very well.

"Stop!" Tadashi yelled at the man, furious and worried for his brother whom had run so fast that he was no longer even in the hallway. He'd likely ducked into a rare open room, trying to flee from his kidnapper, and Tadashi's rage flared back up again. He didn't waste any more time chasing after the man on _foot,_ and, sliding his blacked out goggles down, gave one glance to the tech built into his thrown together suit before pressing a button and allowing for the wheels in his boots to unfold and deploy.

Tadashi had always been good at driving and maneuvering his moped, back when he'd still had it. He'd rescued Hiro from two of the five times he'd caught him bot fighting with that moped, and was confident in his ability to maneuver the wheels on his heels - which Gogo had helped him make quickly with a little electromag suspension technology - in a similar way. Gogo had larger discs built into her suit, suspended just at her ankles. Unlike Tadashi's wheels, which were far smaller, but wider, and were held like roller skate wheels at the front and back of his feet.

Callaghan had not planned for such an intervention by super suited teens, and so was unprepared to fight back when, in the middle of making a hard right into the left open room which housed the portals, he was tackled by a fast going white suited blur.

Into the room they tumbled, old professor and the older Hamada brother. Tadashi's wheels had left the ground when he'd tackled Callaghan around the middle, and the slick floor of the room offered him no traction or friction to try and regain the upper hand against the stronger man he found himself grappling with. Callaghan was snarling, looking like an angry dog with his bushy eyebrows scrunched over his eyes in a fearsome, somewhat off-kilter looking scowl of rage.

"You, leave, my, brother, alone!" Tadashi said as he fought on the ground with Callaghan. His hands were reinforced with heavily padded gloves, and he thanked his lucky stars for all his karate lessons as not only did he seem to be winning when he thought he'd have no chance, but Callaghan slowly seemed to be trying to escape rather than fight him back as their wrestle went on.

Finally, they managed to break apart, and Callaghan staggered to his feet in the same quick moment that Tadashi righted himself on his wheels. Barely a glance was spared to the two huge hoops of machinery and science looming over the canyon behind them, but Tadashi did take the steep drop off into account, as well as the control/viewing room with the red paneled windows that was situated above him.

This room was nothing special though, likely they were only there because it was just the only open door in the hallway that Callaghan had decided to check for Hiro in first.

Callaghan rubbed a bit at his scratched and dirty face, still glaring heavily at Tadashi as the two now stood across from each other warily, "Ah, so you're the brother he didn't want to tell where he was going." The professor said in a sneer that seemed uncharacteristic for such a fatherly face.

Tadashi felt ice slide across his shoulders at Callaghan's words though, "What do you mean?" He couldn't help but ask.

There were a few thudding crashes from behind the two tense men, as the rest of Tadashi's friends appeared in the doorway, but Callaghan ignored them. He and Tadashi were slowly moving further and further from the door, and closer and closer to the stairs that led to the control room. "I mean that Hiro was so eager to come help me. Didn't want you to know though, but I guess at his age some sort of rebel phase should be expected."

Tadashi narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. The idea that Hiro had gone with this man _willingly _wasn't sitting right with him, not when he'd seen Hiro run away from the helicopter in such a panic. Something moved in the dark corner of the room behind Callaghan that distracted Tadashi from his thoughts for only a moment, but then he refocused.

"No, I don't-"

"Tadashi! Look out!" Came Honey Lemon's quick voice.

Tadashi blinked, and noticed that the thing that had flickered and distracted him had actually been a thick electrical wire. About the width of his neck, the massive black wire, with thinner wire companions trailing behind it, reared up into the air like a snake about to strike. It dove for Callaghan then, unable to truly wrap around him due to one end of the wires being plugged into some sort of power source and the other end trailing off into the deep empty space below the portals, but still able to loop itself sufficiently around Hiro's kidnapper.

Tadashi jumped backwards, startled, as the electrical wires moved erratically and restrained Callaghan. His wheels slid on the smooth floor and sent him just a bit closer to the edge of the drop off.

But then out of the shadows, from the top of the stairs leading to the observation room, came Hiro. Had this not been his little brother, Tadashi would have been terrified by the display of Hiro's obviously strengthening technopathic abilities. But, this _was_ his little brother. Gaze locked on the struggling Callaghan, with one hand holding the thickest wire, Hiro was wide eyed and pale. He looked thin and bruised but no worse for the wear though, which brought such relief to Tadashi that for a moment he was overwhelmed with the feeling. It nearly dragged him back into the past, to that dark night when he had decided they needed to go on the run, when he and Hiro had sat in a hospital room while their Aunt's heartbeat beeped loudly in the silence. When she'd woken up - surviving even after the Yakuza had broken into the cafe, destroyed everything, and demanded she hand over her technopathic nephew - Tadashi and Hiro had clung to her for what felt like days.

Then when Aunt Cass was up and about again, Tadashi and Hiro had made sure that Aunt Cass had a place to move far far away from the old cafe where the Yakuza knew they lived, cleared the records of her and themselves, and then the two of them had taken to the streets.

But when Tadashi saw Hiro, looking still so very young, and when he heard his friends clamber into the room behind him making sounds of concern, Tadashi decided then and there that they wouldn't run anymore. It obviously did no good, what with selfish people managing to find Hiro no matter how far the brothers tried to get away from the same situation over and over again, and not having stable lives or caring friends was no longer worth the "safety."

Hiro looked away from Callaghan, made eye contact through Tadashi's dark goggles with his brother, and said in a hesitant but hopeful way, "Nii-san?"

Tadashi tugged the goggles off his face and skated forward to the stairs to scoop his baby brother into his arms.

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><p><strong>Please review! <strong>


	12. Chapter 12

**AN: slIDEEEES IN SO I DECIDED TO GO WITH MY OTHER PLOT AFTER ALL. This fic still is on its way to the end though and will be ending soon, perhaps 3 or 4 more chapters maybe? but instead of something sweet and kinda lacking a climax, i'm blowing everything up right now in this chapter and will be piecing it back together. The brothers at least are reunited and thats a good thing, right? :D **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>For a moment, everything was alright. That moment was gone quickly.<p>

"No!" Callaghan yelled, startling the Hamadas from their reunion as he fought and raged against the wires containing him. He managed to get one arm free then, despite how worn and beaten he already was, and continued to squirm until his other arm was past the tight grip of the wires. Hiro blinked from his place huddled to his brother's side, confused for a moment as to why the wires were not as tight around Callaghan as he had originally made them to be, before he realized that he had let go of the wires when Tadashi had pulled him into his arms. Without that physical connection, the electrical wires, which were not exactly _true _technology that he could fully control, were slowly slumping out of their tight loops around Callaghan. "If I don't get her back, no one gets anyone back." The professor snarled, before finally wrenching himself from the wires and charging at Tadashi and Hiro.

Tadashi shoved Hiro behind him quickly, nearly pushing his brother off the bottom step of the stairs that led to the control room, as he struck a defensive pose against Callaghan. But Callaghan did not try to engage in a fight, and instead, when Tadashi tried to swing a punch at him, shoved his side against the young man as if his body were a battering ram. Tadashi hit the wall behind him, grunted at the impact, and by the time the rest of the team had vaulted into action, Callaghan was already halfway up the stairway.

"Gogo!" Tadashi yelled as Callaghan reached for the door.

"On it!" Gogo yelled in response, and then she slung one of her electromag discs straight toward Callaghan.

The disc struck true, knocking against the side of the older man and sending him to fall against the door with a yell of pain, but it was not enough. Callaghan pressed a hand to his injured side, and then gripped the door knob even tighter. With dark, glaring eyes entirely different from the caring ones the SFIT students were used to seeing on him, he opened the door, slipped inside, and shut it behind him just as another disc collided with the metal and dented it with the force.

Wasabi, with his great size, took a nod from Honey as cue to be the next up the stairs. His lasers were activated already, though crude and unstable from being so quickly thrown together they still would be effective. Hiro watched the man pass by, glowing blades extending from his hands, with wide, fascinated eyes. Then, Tadashi suddenly filled his vision, and Hiro found himself suddenly being subjected to all the ways Tadashi knew how to check someone for injuries.

"whW- Tadashi- Tada- Hey! Stop it! C'mon I'm-" Hiro struggled against his brother's arms, suddenly very much aware of the tense situation they were still in, as well as the flashes of Honey Lemon's phone as she took pictures of the two brothers.

"Are you hurt?" Tadashi asked.

Hiro felt a flash of deja vu. "No, I've got no injuries other than-"

Then, Tadashi's hands were on his shoulders, and Hiro found himself pulled into one of the tightest hug he'd ever experienced. "This is why you don't go running around alone, ya bonehead." Tadashi grumbled, throat against the top of Hiro's head, no heat in his words. "Okay?"

Hiro pouted, but melted into his brother's embrace, "I had it under control." He tried to salvage.

Tadashi laughed a bit, "Hah, no, I really don't think you did."

With a huff, Hiro was about to respond, but he was cut off by Wasabi at the top of the stairs shouting, "Got through this door, but there's another, military grade one behind it!"

Tadashi and Hiro pulled apart, and then Tadashi glanced up to Wasabi before smirking at his brother. "Leave this work to the heroes little bro."

Floundering for a response, Hiro spluttered, "I was almost a hero too! You should've seen the armor I had built for," he sucked in a gasp that very nearly choked him, "Baymax! I'll be right back!"

Before Tadashi could regain his grip on his little brother - who he had just got back, _he had just got him back_ - Hiro was pulling away. Hiro had a way of running that was very, well, spastic, for lack of a better word, and in his scramble to leave the room he crashed into both Fred and Honey, who were on their way to go help Wasabi break down the second door.

"I'll be right back Tadashi, I swear!" Hiro shouted to his brother, "Baymax helped me a lot, and I gotta make sure he's okay." Helped him a lot was an understatement. The healthcare bot had kept Hiro calm and had warded off the panic and fear whenever it rose up. Baymax didn't deserve to be left behind, he deserved to join the family he'd helped reunite. Hiro slipped out the door and into the hallway.

But the very moment after Hiro did so and was out of sight, one of the two large gateways at the end of the room took a deep breath. Tadashi and the rest of the gang turned towards it in slow horror, not knowing what to expect, and found the world suddenly dominated by thick neon color.

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><p>Hiro burst into the open air, leaving the darkness of the hallway behind, and collided with Baymax in his clumsy haste.<p>

"Hhhhiro." The healthcare companion said as Hiro tripped and flopped against his white stomach. Both of them went falling slowly backwards due to Baymax's popped leg being unable to hold them both up, and Hiro yelped a bit as Baymax's body gave far too much beneath him before pushing him right back up until he rested comfortably against the round curve of Baymax's stomach. "Are you sa-satisfied with your care?" Baymax asked.

Hiro couldn't help but grin down at Baymax, and he ignored the question in favor of giving in, just a little, to the exhaustion that had been threatening to grip him ever since the entire ordeal had begun. Hiro's face buried itself in Baymax's dirty white stomach, and he grumbled, "Nope, you're stuck with me buddy."

Baymax seemed confused at this response, and brought his arms up slowly and jerkily to cover Hiro, "But you seem to be alright now, and your fr-fr-friends are here with you."

Hiro brought his head up and took a deep breath, scrubbed a hand across his mouth - Baymax really was dirty - and then spoke as he began to push himself out of Baymax's hold. "Yeah, and you're going to meet them!" He smiled fondly at the robot as he worked to tug it back to its feet, "You're going to come with us when we leave, and stay with me and Tadashi, okay?"

"Tadashi?" Baymax said.

Hiro tugged on one huge arm to lead Baymax back into the building behind them, "Yeah, Tadashi. My brother."

"Tadashi." Baymax repeated, in an odd tone of voice, his eyes blinking and staring deep into the dark hallway before them.

Something groaned down within the darkness, and Hiro stiffened, paused, and stood next to Baymax as they both stared into the building.

Another groan, and then Hiro was off, running as fast as he could with Baymax stumbling and bouncing along behind him on one good leg. He had no idea what had caused the loud and frightening sound of groaning metal and tech that he had heard, but he hoped it wasn't anywhere near his brother. He hoped that this was all over.

Then, Hiro turned the corner and burst into the room where the two portals - one broken, one intact - were housed, and found himself sucked off his feet and into the air.

The portal behind him, the one that Callaghan had so desperately wanted him to fix, was alive and swirling with hungry, terrifying colors. Confused at the fact that Callaghan had possibly been lying and grip on Baymax failing, Hiro, still close to the ground as he slid toward the portal, managed through his confusion to reach out as fast as he could to grip any kind of ridge in the cement. His feet stuck out over the drop off into the space below the portals, and Baymax, who was heavier than Hiro, was steadily sliding across the ground and hissing as air rapidly left him while the portal worked to suck him in.

Hiro could only think of Tadashi though, and Tadashi's friends. His fingers trembled as he pulled himself forward and raised his head in an effort to see where they were. His messy black hair whipped around him and blocked his vision in some moments, but then he spotted them.

Honey Lemon had used some of the chemicals and elements that she had packed with her to create a large, gummy-looking barrier of some sort at the base of the stairway leading to the control room. She, Gogo, and Fred were all huddled behind it, their fists dug into the substance to keep them grounded. Wasabi and Tadashi had not been as lucky though, and it looked as if they had been unable to duck behind Honey Lemon before the portal began to gain strength. Wasabi was still at the top of the stairs, standing in the space between the two doors, and was bracing himself against the first door that he had sliced away. Tadashi was at the bottom of the stairs, eyes shut tightly and gloved hands clenched around the metal railing. His feet were hooked against the bottom rung as well to keep him grounded even as the electromag wheels rolled with the force of the portal as it pulled on them.

Hiro's eyes went wide as he saw the situation his brother was in. He didn't consciously move them, but suddenly, the electrical wires that he had touched earlier were rising up seemingly on their own. They lugged their way over to Tadashi, and wrapped themselves around the startled Hamada's ankles and torso until he was securely held against the stairs. The wires were thick, but not long though, and Hiro felt the strain of them as the stretched push against his temples. Soon enough though, the wires had wrapped around Honey Lemon, Fred, and Gogo as well. Wasabi was just too far away to be included.

The wires seemed to be staying tight this time all on their own, which was a relief, even if the added pressure in Hiro's head was not. None the less, the young technopath allowed himself to relax just a bit once his friends were safe, and that was his mistake.

Hands slipping on rubble, Hiro suddenly found himself sliding toward the canyon again, the strength of the portal having picked up as it shook with instability.

"Hiro!" Tadashi yelled, fighting against the wires which only tightened at their master's subconscious commands. Hiro's head shot up at Tadashi's yell, and he noticed the red tinted windows of the control room above his brother, and the shadow standing there.

Callaghan was watching them all struggle with the invention he had planned to use against Krei. Callaghan was setting fire to his own ship just to watch his enemies burn.

"Hiro! Hold on!" Tadashi yelled again, trying to force his way out of the wires and to his brother and Baymax, who somehow had managed to get stuck against something, and was only moving slowly now toward the portal instead of rapidly.

"Tadashi, don't move!" Hiro yelled over the deep breaths of the portal, staring at the wires, an idea growing in his genius mind. "Please! Everything will be okay!"

But Tadashi still fought the wires, and fought even harder when Hiro shut his eyes, smiled his normal gap-toothed smile at them all, and then completely let go of his hold on the ground.

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><p><strong>Please review pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeee!<strong>


	13. Chapter 13

**AN: dances in and posts this chapter/ hahah hi guys. omg. the reactions in the reviews to me having Hiro let go of the ground ONLY was amazing. I mean, he wasnt even in the portal yet and so many of you were yelling "noooooo" ah I feel evil and powerful. hehe. anyways, hopefully this chapter will make up for the cliffhanger I left the last one off on! **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>"<em>Hiro!"<em> Everyone screamed, watching as the little boy they had come to rescue was sucked towards the portal at an alarming speed. Callaghan too was shocked, and watched with an open mouth through the windows of the control room. He was distracted long enough for Wasabi to finally carve his way through the second door.

"_I've got the controls, anyone have any idea how to turn this thing off?!" _Came Wasabi's frantic voice over a loudspeaker, but Tadashi didn't listen, he only watched his little brother fly, as if in slow motion, through the air towards certain doom.

And then a wire snaked its way out through the air, caught Hiro around the middle, and held him fast against the portal's force.

Tadashi breathed again.

"Tadashi!" Hiro yelled, sweat dripping worryingly down his face. He was extending his abilities too far, he was pushing himself too hard. "I know you have my microbot! I can- I can feel it in your pocket!" Tadashi jerked in surprise. Hiro being able to _feel _technology in the area was something new. Hiro extended a hand toward his shocked brother, as his body wavered in the air, "Toss it here! Hurry!"

"Hiro." Baymax interrupted, "My sensors indicate that your brain activity and neurotransmitter levels have greatly increased. You are under tremendous strain and I recommend-"

"Baymax." Hiro said to the robot, silencing it with one look that Tadashi suspected was a little bit technopathically enforced. "I'll be fine." The younger Hamada continued, tone far calmer than it should have been, with a slight tremble of fear that Hiro had tried and failed to hide. Tadashi knew Hiro wasn't just saying that to Baymax, but also was speaking to his brother and himself as well.

Tadashi was proud, so proud, of his little brother. As the rest of the team talked to Wasabi and worked to somehow shut the portal down, Tadashi dug a hand into his pocket, fished out Hiro's unfinished, lone microbot, and released it confidently into the air.

The microbot shot straight into Hiro's hand, and Hiro pulled it to his chest and gripped it tightly. Hiro bowed his head into his hands for a moment, as if saying goodbye or apologizing to his small invention, before he twisted against the wire, stared into the swirling colors, and launched the microbot with all the power he could muster directly at the technology making up the portal.

For a moment after the microbot had disappeared into the storm of debris being sucked toward the portal, there was nothing.

"_There's a big red button here and I think I should-"_

"_Wasabi if you push that button I swear to all that is good I will-"_

"_Callaghan isn't telling me anything! I don't know what to do and you guys just keep screaming at me-"_

"_And for good reason! Don't press the-"_

"_Tadashi, are you al-"_

Then, with his body twisted to face the portal and the back of his head to Tadashi, Hiro clenched his fists, and an entire piece of metal plating of one of the portal segments popped open to reveal the advanced technology within. Hiro let out a short, breathless, bark of a laugh at that, as if he hadn't believed dismantling the portal would work what with the microbot unfinished as it was. Tadashi couldn't stop a small grin growing on his face as well, and squinted through the chaos to see the small dot that was Hiro's microbot dancing and rolling from one segment to the next in order to repeat itself.

"Nice going lil' man!" Fred cheered.

"What's he doing?" Honey shouted to Tadashi.

Hiro heard her though, and twisted around again in the air and wires around him to grin at the group, "I'm saving your butts is what I'm doing." He responded, but the effect of his bravado and relieved grin was somewhat lost due to the splatter of blood on the bottom half of his face, coming from his nose.

"Hiro, you're hurt!" Gogo shouted before Tadashi could, and Hiro blinked, as if he hadn't realized. He reached a hand up, struggling against the force of the portal behind him to pull his hand through the air, to wipe his knuckles through the blood. When he pulled his hand back so he could see, his eyes went round as he saw the red there against his skin.

Another plate of metal swung open on the portal, and the entire structure shook tremendously. Hiro swayed and jerked in the air, all wide eyes and messy hair and red blood. Tadashi blinked, and something changed. Hiro's expression looked dazed all of a sudden, and he turned slowly back to face the portal, as if possessed by something.

"_I don't know if there's a way I can shut it down!" _

"_Wasabi just shut up for a minu-"_

"_That's what I needed Hiro to help me for. It's unstable. The containment field is failing. There's no way to turn it off and there's no way to escape it. It's going to tear itself apart and-"_

"_Please Professor I used to respect you but right now I'm very close to laser handing you, in the face!"_

"_Hiro are you-"_

"I am detecting signs of life." Baymax's voice whispered.

"... me too, buddy." Hiro responded, feeling a thick, frozen presence lodge itself just behind his eyes. Then, as his microbot worked faster and harder to dismantle the gateway, the wires around Hiro's waist unexpectedly, quietly, released him.

"Hiro _no!_"

The Silent Sparrow swallowed Hiro up in one bite.

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><p>The microbot kept working though, and so Tadashi didn't let out the scream that clawed and struggled and tried to escape from his chest.<p>

"Tadashi-"

"Hiro's fine." Tadashi cut off whoever tried to speak with him.

"What did he mean by signs of life though?" Honey questioned softly, staring at the portal where Hiro had disappeared, looking curious and concerned and completely torn up.

Tadashi bit his lip, "I don't know, but we have to be confident in my little brother." He answered, still feeling the wires and technology holding him tightly and securely.

Baymax responded to Honey's question easily though, "I too am detecting signs of life from, w-w-within." The half deflated robot, still being pulled toward the portal, lifted a hand and pointed at the sickening swirling colors. "The life signs are: female. That is all I can detec-t-t."

"Woah, but how did Hiro sense her too?" Fred said, in awe.

"Hiro, in the time sp-p-pan since the helicopter crashhhhed, has experienced multiple jumps in cognitive ability to higher level functioning than a normal human." Baymax said, once again, easily providing an answer.

"His powers." Fred breathed, and then grinned wide enough that his teeth could be seen beneath the lip of his Kaiju mask, "Oh man, this is so cool! Hiro's technopath abilities are only getting _stronger!_"

Tadashi watched Fred's reaction for a moment, remembered the blood on his little brother's face dripping down from his nose, and said nothing.

The microbot worked away, rolling and sliding with ease through the thick pieces of technology that made up the portal. Plate after plate of metal was falling, wires and sparks flying out only to be sucked into the portal moments later. It was terrifying and somewhat beautiful and Tadashi could not look away because his _brother was in there. _

"_Guys, what's going on down there?" _Wasabi's voice boomed. "_I've still got Callaghan here, he's unconscious now though. He started freaking out the moment Hiro went- yknow. And I had to knock him out. So, what's the plan?" _

"We wait for Hiro." Tadashi responded without missing a beat. "I'm not letting him out of my sight for a million years after this."

"_Okay what's the real pla-"_

"We wait for Hiro." Gogo snapped at her friend. Wasabi huffed, but shut up quickly, the speaker from the control room buzzing with static as he fell silent.

They didn't have to wait for Hiro long.

The portal continued to shake and groan with each piece the microbot tossed from it, and the entire group's panic rose the more unstable the portal became with time. It was at the point where everything was being so strongly sucked in that even the wires wrapped tightly around them were becoming weak against the pulling force. Baymax somehow still managed to not be sucked in, deflated and slumped against the edge of the canyon as he was, and for that Tadashi was grateful. He didn't think he'd be able to take it if both his brother and the robot who helped his brother were both lost to the portal's hunger.

The portal groaned, and suddenly cracked inwards, bending on itself as it finally began to implode. What Callaghan had said about the magnetic containment field being dysfunctional was true, as if it were operational, the portal would have just continued to consume everything that wasn't itself, but instead, it was eating away at its own edges while Hiro's microbot continued to pick it apart.

With that inwards crack though, something else happened as well. Another distortion to the metal, and another happened, until the portal was very nearly as bright as the sun and as strong as a tornado. Then, with one last shuddering breath, something huge and heavy shot from it's depths, before the entire Silent sparrow imploded, leaving the one hoop that had been intact just as burnt and warped as its dysfunctional brother beside it. The sucking wind that the portal had been producing died down immediately, and the wires wrapped around Tadashi and his friends slumped weakly down. Hiro's microbot gave one last shudder from its place still on the edge of the portal, before it too fell uselessly into the depths below.

The huge and heavy thing was a pod of some sort, and it sailed down and forward, crashed into the wall of the metal canyon, and then hit the ground with enough force to make the room shudder. Tadashi was the first to the edge, skidding to a stop next to Baymax, who was trying to pick himself up and make his way down to the pod - whatever it was. And it _was_ indeed a pod, made of large and sleek white metal, with a shadowed figure lying inside, and a far smaller figure that had been clinging to its side but was now sliding bonelessly away.

"Hiro!" Tadashi yelled, scrambling his way over to the electrical ladder, which was bent and hung at an angle sticking out into the air forever now. But he paused, turned, shouted, "Guys, go to Wasabi and contact someone to help us, I've got Hiro." Before climbing across the ladder and searching for a spot that was low enough that he could drop and not be injured.

Baymax simply, gracelessly, fell down the edge until he hit the floor with a heavy thud, and then started to re-inflate himself. Tadashi couldn't help but smile at that, as he leaped from the ladder and allowed for his electromag wheels to catch him with minimal jarring to his actual legs or self.

As soon as he'd hit the ground, Tadashi was at Hiro's side. The pod, with the ice that crawled across its side and painted patterns on the darkened window, could come second. Tadashi fell to his knees beside his brother and tugged the small limp body into his lap, feeling for a pulse and finding more relief and joy there than when he had first seen Hiro's face on the stairway and gone to scoop him into his arms all those moments ago. He then worked to wipe away the thick blood that stained the lower half of Hiro's face, not caring at all if the blood stained his gloves.

"Tadashi. I will scan Hiro now." Baymax said, wobbling over with one leg still popped and torn.

Tadashi stared up into the white robot's black blinking eyes, and nodded. "Alright, go ahead." Then, the pod began to hiss, and the ice began to melt, "You should scan her too when you're done, ok?"

"I will d-d-do so." Baymax said in the same moment his cameras clicked and swept up and down Hiro's body. "Hiro is: alright. He is suffering from extreme exhaustion right now, both mental and physical. Recommended treatment: bed rest, scheduled well balanced meals, and care from loved ones."

Tadashi's head jerked at the final treatment recommendation, not expecting the emotional tone with which Baymax said it, but the robot was already turned away and working to open the pod's hatch so as to get a better look at his second patient inside.

Not wanting to leave Hiro slumped on the ground, but knowing that the robot with his thick vinyl fingers would need help, Tadashi slowly lowered his brother down before standing up and going to help Baymax. Blood smeared across the frozen metal as he touched it and tried to search for a pressure point where he could pop the top of the pod off, and he found it after a few moments of prodding and probing.

The darkened glass of the pod hissed open, and within was a young woman, looking just a bit older than Tadashi himself, obviously deep in cryo-sleep. Tadashi could recognize in her face the jawline and nose of their professor though, and the world seemed to spin around him. He returned to his brother's side in a sort of half numb daze, lifted Hiro into his arms, and allowed in silence for Baymax to scan Abigail Callaghan. All this was done before his friends poked their heads over the edge of the drop-off and announced that help was on the way.

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><p><strong>Please review! Reviews are great and actually make me smile a lot when I get to see you readers' reactions and hear your thoughts on this story. Please keep reviewing! <strong>


	14. Chapter 14

**AN: This is the final chapter to this story. The verrrrrry last one. I do plan on writing a little extra (an omake if you will) detailing what Hiro went through while rescuing Abigail, but this chapter right here is the happy conclusion. It hope it doesn't seem thrown together or rushed, but it is a bit piecey and time-jumpy. I hope you all enjoyed this story and I'm so very happy and thankful to all of you who've stuck with me throughout it all. Thank you thank you thank you! I look forward to writing more Big Hero 6 things and staying in this fandom. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>They had to go to the hospital, there was no way to avoid it or dodge it. In the past, the Hamadas had avoided hospitals or public spaces like the plague, wary of Yakuza and other slimy people that they might have caught the eye of. Now though, Tadashi knew they had to go. This was the first step toward not running anymore, this was the first step.<p>

His hand around Hiro's tightened just a bit more, as the ambulance they were in drove through the streets of San Fransokyo.

The rest of the group were in police cars, and not ambulances, following behind them to the hospital. Callaghan was in an ambulance - Gogo's disc really had done a number on his side - and Abigail Callaghan was in the same ambulance as Tadashi and Hiro were. Tadashi had been allowed to sit along the edge of the vehicle as long as he did not get in the way of the professionals if there were to be an emergency, and thankfully, all the way from the bay coast to the hospital, there were none.

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><p>The first visitor the Hamadas had - aside from their friends, who had crammed themselves, superhero gear and all, into Hiro's room the moment they'd been allowed to - was, surprisingly, Aleister Krei. He arrived after a day of Tadashi sitting by Hiro's bedside, a day of laughing and joking quietly with a younger brother who fell asleep and woke up at random intervals. Hiro was asleep when Krei appeared in the doorway, looking unusually somber and genuine, a huge difference from his cool businessman front.<p>

"How are you, Mr. Hamada?" Krei asked as Tadashi stood slowly from his chair.

Tadashi didn't answer at first, watching Krei with a calculating gaze before he said slowly, "Fine." He stared at Krei for a moment more before blurting out, "Thank you for telling us where to find Callaghan, and for not turning us in when we broke into your office."

Krei's expression fell then, and he rubbed a hand across his face. He stepped further into the room, and with his free hand, slowly shut the door behind him. Tadashi tensed immediately, but Krei then held both hands up in a placating, non-threatening gesture.

"_I _came here to say thank you to your brother, and _you're_ the one thanking me?" Krei said, "Please Mr. Hamada, that's not how this works."

Tadashi squinted, and tried to relax. Krei was not the threat, Krei had never been a threat. But it was one thing knowing that and another _understanding_ it. "Thank you? What for?"

Krei chuckled mirthlessly, "I went to go see Robert before I came here." Callaghan had been moved into police custody after being treated for his minor injuries. "He practically screamed his plan at me." Krei gestured to the sleeping Hiro, "Your brother and his refusal to go along with Robert's plans… well, saved my life."

Tadashi was shocked at this. He hadn't known the motive behind Callaghan's kidnapping of his brother, but to hear that it had had to do with Krei after all was a bit of a shock. "What- why would Callaghan want to-"

"Because of Abigail." Krei breathed, looking contrite, not meeting Tadashi's eyes. "Akuma Island was one of my testing islands, and the Silent Sparrow was an abandoned project. Abigail Callaghan was the test pilot, meant to go in, and come out the other side. She went in, and never came out, and I don't think Robert ever forgave me for… losing her."

Tadashi sat down heavily in his chair, "And what, Hiro just got mixed up in that?" He said, reaching out a hand to grab Hiro's again, but Hiro's hand twitched beneath his, and then Hiro was speaking softly, having been awake almost the entire time since Krei had stepped into the room.

"It wasn't for you." Hiro said, voice scratchy but strong. Krei blinked in shock, "I wouldn't have agreed to Callaghan's plans no matter who he was going to go after. Don't get confused Mr. Krei." Hiro said, speaking as if talking to the man who had tried to press letter after letter of Krei Tech information at him when he'd been younger, instead of the man who had let Tadashi and his friends go and who was standing in that room saying thank you.

Krei seemed to understand this though, and he smiled a thin but kind smile. "No, don't worry, I won't. I still want to thank you though." He straightened the edges of his suit, and his back, and suddenly the businessman that Krei was had returned, "I'm ready to fund both you and Abigail wherever you want to go in life, Hiro. It's the least I can do."

At this sudden generosity, Hiro blinked, and pressed himself back into his pillows in a physical display of his shock. "What's the catch, huh? I come work for Krei Tech after all?" He said, and Tadashi stayed silent, watching the exchange and letting his younger brother handle things.

"No, you don't have to work for me. If you want to though, I'm certainly not going to stop you." Krei answered, "This is my thank you and apology all rolled into one. You'd be wise to accept it."

And Hiro's lips thinned, and he looked like he was about to say something rude in response, so Tadashi decided that then was his time to cut in. "Thank you very much Mr. Krei. We'll think about your offer."

Krei seemed to understand that they were done talking, and with a final stiff nod and wish of health to Hiro, he opened the door and slipped back into the hallway.

For a moment, there was silence, as both brothers tried to absorb what all had just been offered to them. Then, Hiro snorted, shifted his shoulders until he was snuggled back down against his pillow, opened his mouth and said, "Gosh, what a pompous a-"

"Hiro!" Tadashi thwacked his brother on the side of his head.

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><p>The second visitor the Hamadas had, right as Hiro was getting dressed in his blood stained clothes - Tadashi picked at his little brother's collar and made a mental note to buy Hiro a new ensemble <em>immediately, <em>as it wouldn't be good for them to go wandering the city with their friends while covered in blood - was someone they thought that they'd have to seek out themselves.

Aunt Cass came, like a whirlwind of brown hair and cafe warmth, into the room and enveloped them both into a hug faster than either brother could blink.

"Oh my boys oh you're alright oh when I got the call I thought the _worst _and you both are in _so much trouble _oh but I'm so glad you're okay." Their Aunt babbled, one arm hooked around Tadashi's neck, pulling him down to her level, the other arm and hand tangled in Hiro's mess of hair, keeping him pressed close to Cass' side.

"Ow what- Aunt Cass?!" Hiro blurted, voice muffled against his Aunt's armpit. Tadashi said nothing, but met the eyes of his friends - who stood in the doorway - over Cass's shoulder, and smiled gratefully at them. "How did you even-" None of them heard the small hissing that indicated Baymax, who had been deactivated and packed up into his case and stashed in the corner of Hiro's room, was inflating at the sound of Hiro's yelp.

"I'm still your emergency contact on all your records you knuckleheads." Aunt Cass answered, voice wobbling. "And after a year of you two never getting checked into the hospital, let me just say that getting that call and then getting called by your friends was an absolute heart attack causer!"

"I am equipped with defibrillators." Baymax's voice startled them. Aunt Cass yelped with surprise and, grip still tight on her nephews, pulled them away as Baymax approached. His leg still had not been patched up, and the town vinyl looked just a bit menacing to the simple cafe owner.

"What is that?!" Cass gasped, as the rest of their friends came into the room to try and calm Baymax down. Baymax's hands were glowing bright blue with his defibrillators as he approached, and Gogo and Wasabi were the two to push against his arms and pull Baymax away.

Hiro laughed as his friends struggled with Baymax, who was only trying to help, and Tadashi couldn't help but smile at the sound. "C'mon Baymax, it's just an expression."

Baymax powered down his defibrillators immediately upon hearing Hiro's statement. "An expression?" He asked.

Hiro broke away from his Aunt's grip, and moved over to Baymax to grip one arm. "Yeah, an expression."

"Tadashi." Aunt Cass whispered to her oldest nephew, "Please tell me that thing is safe."

Tadashi looked at his Aunt, though with his neck still hooked by her elbow, this meant that he could only slide his eyes sideways to look at her, and chuckled before responded, "Yeah, it's one of the safest things."

Aunt Cass nodded, trusting her nephew, before she pulled him in for a hug again and then released him. Then, Tadashi found his ear being gripped tightly, and he yelped, "Oh we have so much to talk about, all of you, you're all coming to the cafe and we're all sitting down and no one is leaving ever again, you hear me?"

"The cafe?" Hiro said in surprise, at the same time that Tadashi said,

"Ow- Aunt Cass, don't worry, we're done running."

Aunt Cass paused, and her eyes went round at Tadashi's words, and then they abruptly filled with tears. "Really?" She asked, as if she couldn't believe it, letting go of Tadashi's ear so that he could rub the sore red mark there.

"Tadashi nodded, looked at the group in the room - at Honey Lemon, Gogo, Wasabi, Fred, Baymax, Aunt Cass, and Hiro - and smiled, "Yeah, really."

The massive group hug that happened then nearly had them all in hospital beds.

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><p>The Hamada brothers learned that Aunt Cass had moved back to the cafe in San Fransokyo about two months after Hiro and Tadashi had dropped off the map.<p>

"It wasn't selling, and I couldn't bear to not be there in case you two- in case you two came back." Aunt Cass said, moving quickly behind the cafe counter, two cups of hot chocolate ready in her hands for her nephews.

"But, the Yakuza-" Tadashi tried to say, but Aunt Cass quickly shut him up by shoving the warm mug into his hands. Hiro already was gulping his drink down - Aunt Cass' hot chocolate had always been his favorite, and it had been one of the smaller things that the brothers had missed while on the run.

"Do I look like I've had trouble recently, Tadashi?" Cass asked, rubbing her knuckles against her oldest's head, "Everything is alright."

Tadashi allowed himself to believe that, and the hot chocolate tasted even better after he did so.

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><p>"You should apply to SFIT. Both of you." Gogo said.<p>

Tadashi sighed, gathering the plates from in front of his friends.

In the aftermath of the events that had ultimately shoved the brothers back into a stable life, all their friends had still remained by their sides. The cafe had become a regular place for them to all hang out and catch up with the Hamada brothers, who still were getting used to relying upon their Aunt once more.

Hiro was frequently in the garage - unpacking all of their old tech and working to upgrade Baymax into something more up to date and smooth running. And thus, with Hiro frequently absent from the conversations, many times the suggestion of going to college had been brought up to Tadashi.

"You'd both fit right in, and I bet the lab would be even more exciting with you there!" Honey Lemon chipped in, a can of some sort of sugary soda from the vending machine around the street in her hands.

"I told you guys." Tadashi said, still stacking plates. Surprisingly, every member of the group were big meal eaters. "With our year on the run, Hiro and my's high school scores and transcripts aren't going to be up to date anymore. We'd never get in."

"Krei said he'd fund Hiro anywhere he wanted to go, I bet that includes university." Fred said. "You two'd be a shoe in anyways, the way you work with technology. I mean, our super suits are all totally awesome!"

Tadashi stiffened and ignored the second half of Fred's statement, "You heard that conversation with Krei?" He asked.

"Well- Baymax kinda-"

Tadashi facepalmed, and swiftly walked away from the table and the pressure of his friends. He tried to find escape in the back kitchen, and managed to hide there for maybe fifteen minutes, but Aunt Cass knew he was avoiding his friends, and pushed him right back out into the cafe. Tadashi huffed at the betrayal, slumped his shoulders, and went to walk back over to his friends. But he stopped, and he paused, because someone else was there.

In a wheelchair, pulled up to the table at which the rest of the _Big Heroes _- As Fred had begun calling them after the chaotic events with Hiro's kidnapping and the Silent Sparrow - sat a woman who Tadashi had only seen the face of while she slept. He and Hiro had not visited Abigail while she was recovering, though they should have, and thus, Tadashi tried to retreat back to the kitchen again.

Aunt Cass forcefully pushed him over to the table, her hands on the middle of her nephews back, shoving him forward even as he dug his heels in.

But Abigail smiled at him, and angled herself in her wheelchair to give Tadashi a tight hug, as if he and his brother _hadn't _exposed her father's revenge plot and got him stuck in jail.

"Ah, you're Tadashi!" Abigail said with an easy, gentle grin. Then she peered around his shoulder, "Where is Hiro? I wanted to see if he was alright and thank him for rescuing me. I remember- I remember seeing him through the windshield for only a few moments. I might've been hallucinating though, never can tell when one starts to come out of cryo-sleep." She said with a confident wave of her hand, but then her expression sobered, "He was bleeding though, and pounding on my pod, saying something but I couldn't really hear, you know." Tadashi didn't know, but nodded like he did. "He was very brave. I wouldn't be alive without him. You're lucky to have him as a little brother."

This, Tadashi did know, and he finally managed to smile genuinely at Abigail Callaghan. "Yeah, he is pretty amazing, even though at times he can be a bit of a bonehead."

Abigail and the rest of the group laughed at that. When Hiro emerged from the garage, Baymax in tow, and came into the cafe confused as to why they were laughing, Tadashi realized that he wouldn't mind this. He wouldn't mind being tied down just a little bit more, being able to go to school with all his friends and learn more about robotics. Abigail spoke of her ideas of working at the college once she'd recovered a bit more. She'd of course have to get her credentials and experience back to standard, but aerodynamics and robotics had both always come naturally to her - as her days as a bot fighter could attest to - and being able to give back to the university her father had taught at, and give back to the students he had hurt, would help her heal. Tadashi was wary of having Hiro around so much technology though, especially with his new elevated levels of power. It would be tough, but Hiro's power would have an outlet in other ways. After all, all of their super suits needed some refinement before they could go and continue to fight crime on the streets of San Fransokyo.

Abigail Callaghan left the cafe with a wave, wheeling herself out to go to her next physical therapy session. Hiro dragged Baymax up to his and Tadashi's shared room to play video games on his computer. The rest of the gang all left when it began to get dark, smiling and laughing and joking together. When Aunt Cass asked Tadashi later on that night about possibly applying to SFIT, Tadashi took Hiro's microbot from his pocket, rolled it in his fingers, and smiled.

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><p><em><strong>The End<strong>_

**Please review! **


	15. Extra

**EXTRA: chapter 13.5 - a quick chapter detailing what happened to Hiro while he was inside the portal rescuing Abigail.**

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><p>For a moment, Hiro thought he'd died.<p>

The world was black and cold around him, with the only source of light coming from the portal behind him that he had just gone through. There was debris everywhere, drifting through the open space as if drifting through water, and when Hiro moved his limbs it felt the same as if he were swimming.

Thank goodness he could breathe though. The portal had sucked in enough oxygen and air to sustain him for the time being. But he could feel himself getting light headed quickly, and so he fought to push himself forward through the outer-space like pocket of the universe. The technology that he had felt, that hard and cold presence in his brain, was still there, and so he moved toward it. A piece of metal drifted into his side, and Hiro pushed it away as if it were an unruly pet. It drifted back, and he pushed it away again, accidentally sending himself floating in the opposite direction as he did so.

"This is ridiculous." Hiro huffed, pouting as his body floated, blood still dripping down his face but drying quickly in the cooling vacuum he was in. "I need something that can propel me."

And then he saw it.

Something in Hiro's mind seemed to slide into place the moment his eyes fell upon the frozen, drifting pod of advanced technology. It practically sang to him, broken thrusters and darkened windows and all, and suddenly, Hiro's entire world was the goal of getting to that pod. As if it had heard Hiro's wishes, the pod responded to his thoughts. It rocked and rolled in the air, very gently, very weakly, but somehow it managed to begin pushing itself closer to the technopath calling to it.

Hiro, meanwhile, coughed and hacked as his head pounded and his nose bled. "Ugh- Nasty." He choked, his powers growing in strength far too fast for his body to keep up. "I'll be feeling this tomorrow." Hiro grumbled, as the pod moved toward him, the microbot outside the portal continued to spin, and the wires stayed tight around his friends.

Another piece of debris shot from the portal behind Hiro then, and slammed into him and broke Hiro's focus. This piece was far larger than the small annoying bit of metal from earlier had been, and it sent Hiro's small body careening and spinning forwards in the lack of gravity. He slammed against the pod that had been making its steady way toward him, and both him and it were sent by his momentum further away from the portal than the pod had been before.

After a few moments, the pod slowly began to stop spinning, the oxygen that the portal had sucked in providing a mockery of air resistance in the area where it was still abundant. Hiro clenched his eyes shut and huddled against the top of the pod, not wanting to throw up or look further into the dark recesses of the void behind him. When he finally did open his eyes though, he came face to face with a young woman.

The technology of the pod beneath him hummed with happiness as Hiro wiped his hand against the fog and frozen air, clearing the darkly tinted glass so he could look more clearly upon the woman inside. Hiro's brain spun through it's thought process. She looked familiar. She was lost in the portal, and her helmet had a Krei Tech logo stamped on its side. She looked like Callaghan. She was Callaghan's daughter who Callaghan had wanted to avenge. She _wasn't dead._

A burst of light pulsed forward from the far off portal, and Hiro looked away from the pod pilot's face to stare in horror at his only escape. He could feel it, the other side of the portal collapsing and destabilizing, and it _hurt. _

"Alright." Hiro breathed, trying to remain calm. He turned back to the woman in the pod, and tried to pound upon the window and wake her up. "Hey, if you could wake up, Ms. Callaghan, and pilot this thing to safety, that would be really appreciated!" Abigail did not stir, and Hiro choked back a frustrated sound of hopelessness, and pounded harder upon the glass. His knuckles began to ache. "Please! Please wake up. I can't- I can't push myself any further! I can't get us out without your help!"

Hiro could feel Tadashi, calm and confident, letting the wires hold him as he waited for his little brother to return. Hiro wiped the blood from his nose and pressed his forehead against the cold metal beneath him.

"Alright… Okay. Breathe, Hiro." He whispered to himself. "You can do this. Put that big brain of yours to good use."

Slowly, ever so slowly, Hiro directed his mental attention away from the microbot dismantling the portal. He stretched his arms out, wrapping them as much as he could around the top of the pod, flattening his palms against the technology. The thrusters were broken, torn and pulsing rudely, but Hiro growled at them the moment he could feel their pain and they fell quiet for him.

Everything fell quiet. Then, the thrusters burst to life in a roar of fire and sound.

Hiro's head shot up, and he grinned at Abigail Callaghan and at the pod and at the bright twisting portal before him "Yes!" He cheered, fingers trembling against the cold ridges of the metal, body shaking as he tried to hold on as they moved forward toward safety.

That safety began to twist and distort, as the Silent Sparrow gave in to its own hunger and began to invert and break apart. Refusing to give in to dread and panic at the sight of the portal finally beginning to shut, Hiro pushed the weak, half-dead thrusters a bit harder. The portal cracked loudly, grew very bright, and Hiro buried his face against the metal again, trying to find solace in Abigail Callaghan's calmly sleeping expression as he protected his face and eyes from the implosion at the same time.

The moment they passed through the gateway, something in Hiro's mind _snapped. _He'd pushed himself further than he ever had before, and his body was done listening to his commands. The portal broke and distorted behind him and Abigail as they shot to freedom, and Hiro was unconscious before the pod crash landed into the ground. He never heard Tadashi call his name.

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><p><strong>Thank you again for reading! <strong>


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